Smalls' "quiet party."


CHAPTER IX.

MR. VERDANT GREEN ATTENDS LECTURES AND, IN DESPITE OF
SERMONS, HAS DEALINGS WITH FILTHY LUCRE.

OUR freshman, like all other freshmen, now began to think seriously
of work, and plunged desperately into all the lectures that it was
possible for him to attend, beginning every course with a zealousness
that shewed him to be filled with the idea that such a plan was
eminently necessary for the attainment of his degree; in all this in
every respect deserving the Humane Society's medal for his brave
plunge into the depths of the Pierian spring, to fish up the beauties
that had been immersed therein by the poets of old. When we say that
our freshman, like other freshmen, "began" this course, we use the
verb advisedly; for, like many other freshmen who start with a burst
in learning's race, he soon got winded, and fell back among the ruck.
But the course of lectures, like the course of true love, will not
always run smooth, even to those who undertake it with the same
courage as Mr. Verdant Green.

The dryness of the daily routine of lectures, which varied about as
much as the steak-and-chop, chop-and-steak dinners of ancient
taverns, was occasionally relieved by episodes, which, though not
witty in themselves, were yet the cause of wit in others; for it
takes but little to cause amusement in a lecture-room, where a bad
construe; or the imaginative excuses of late-comers; or the confusion
of some young gentleman who has to turn over the leaf of his Greek