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CHAPTER I

ST. AMBROSE'S COLLEGE

St. Ambrose's College was a moderate-sized one. There might have
been some seventy or eighty undergraduates in residence, when our
hero appeared there as a freshman. Of these, unfortunately for
the college, there were a very large proportion of the
gentleman-commoners; enough, in fact, with the other men whom
they drew round them, and who lived pretty much as they did, to
form the largest and leading set in the college. So the college
was decidedly fast.

The chief characteristic of this set was the most reckless
extravagance of every kind. London wine merchants furnished them
with liqueurs at a guinea a bottle and wine at five guineas a
dozen; Oxford and London tailors vied with one another in
providing them with unheard-of quantities of the most gorgeous
clothing. They drove tandems in all directions, scattering their
ample allowances, which they treated as pocket money, about
roadside inns and Oxford taverns with open hand, and "going tick"
for everything which could by possibility be booked. Their cigars
cost two guineas a pound; their furniture was the best that could
be bought; pine-apples, forced fruit, and the most rare preserves
figured at their wine parties; they hunted, rode steeple-chases
by day, played billiards until the gates closed, and then were
ready for _vingt-et-une_, unlimited loo, and hot drink in their
own rooms, as long as anyone could be got to sit up and play.

The fast set then swamped, and gave the tone to the college; at
which fact no persons were more astonished and horrified than the
authorities of St. Ambrose.

That they of all bodies in the world should be fairly run away
with by a set of reckless, loose young spendthrifts, was indeed a
melancholy and unprecedented fact; for the body of fellows of St.
Ambrose was as distinguished for learning, morality and
respectability as any in the University. The foundation was not,
indeed, actually an open one. Oriel at that time alone enjoyed
this distinction; but there were a large number of open
fellowships, and the income of the college was large, and the
livings belonging to it numerous; so that the best men from other
colleges were constantly coming in. Some of these of a former
generation had been eminently successful in their management of
the college. The St. Ambrose undergraduates at one time had
carried off almost all the university prizes, and filled the
class lists, while maintain