ies that we met our fellow-students; like the celebrated starling,
'we could not get out,' except to permitted dinners and evening parties.
Consequently one could only sketch student life with a hand faltering and
untrained. It was very different with Murray and his friends. They were
their own masters, could sit up to all hours, smoking, talking, and, I
dare say, drinking. As I gather from his letters, Murray drank nothing
stronger than water. There was a certain kind of humour in drink, he
said, but he thought it was chiefly obvious to the sober spectator. As
the sober spectator, he sang of violent delights which have violent ends.
He may best be left to illustrate student life for himself. The 'waster'
of whom he chants is the slang name borne by the local fast man.

THE WASTER SINGING AT MIDNIGHT.
AFTER LONGFELLOW.

Loud he sang the song Ta Phershon
For his personal diversion,
Sang the chorus U-pi-dee,
Sang about the Barley Bree.

In that hour when all is quiet
Sang he songs of noise and riot,
In a voice so loud and queer
That I wakened up to hear.

Songs that distantly resembled
Those one hears from men assembled
In the old Cross Keys Hotel,
Only sung not half so well.

For the time of this ecstatic
Amateur was most erratic,
And he only hit the key
Once in every melody.

If "he wot prigs wot isn't his'n
Ven he's cotched is sent to prison,"
He who murders sleep might well
Adorn a solitary cell.

But, if no obliging peeler
Will arrest this midnight squealer,
My own peculiar arm of might
Must undertake the job to-night.

The following fragment is but doubtfully autobiographical. 'The swift
four-wheeler' seldom devastates the streets where, of old, the
Archbishop's jackmen sliced Presbyterian professors with the claymore, as
James Melville tells us:--

TO NUMBER 27x.

Beloved Peeler! friend and guide
And guard of many a midnight reeler,
None worthier, though the world is wide,
Beloved Peeler.

Thou from before the swift four-wheeler
Didst pluck me, and didst thrust aside
A strongly built provision-dealer

Who menaced me with blows, and cried
'Come on! come on!' O Paian, Healer,
Then but for thee I must have died,
Beloved Peeler!

The following presentiment, though he was no 'waster,' may very well have
been his own. He was only half Scotch, and