rate from
his own rooms in "Purgatory"--as we used to call the little dark back
quadrangle, where, from sheer laziness, which made him think moving a
bore, he had remained ever since his first location there as a freshman,
up three pair of stairs; so that, when his intimate friends wished to
ascertain if he was at home, we used to throw a stone through the
window--and was to take up his abode in "Elysium," where he would be
Chesterton's next-door neighbour, and in the same number as myself. We
were to have a quiet breakfast in each others' rooms in turn every
morning; no gross repast of beef-steaks and "spread-eagle" fowls, but a
slight relish of anchovy toast, potted shrimps, or something equally
ethereal; and the _chasse-cafe_ limited to one cigar and no bottled
porter. It was cruel to interfere with such unexceptionable
arrangements; but a college, though it have a head, has no heart worth
mentioning; and, in an evil hour, they rusticated John Brown. At least
they forbade his staying up the Christmas vacation; and, for the credit
of my friend's character, let me explain. Why John Brown should have
been a person particularly distasteful to the fellows of ---- College,
was a matter at first sight rather hard to understand. He was not what
is called a rowing man; was never found drunk in the quad, or asleep at
the hall lecture; never sported a pink, or drove a team; was not known
to have been concerned in any of the remarkable larks which occurred in
our times; was neither an agent in the Plague of Frogs, nor an actor in
the private theatricals; was not a member of the Agricultural Society,
which made the remarkable experiments with clover and ryegrass in the
college quadrangle; had no talent for midnight howling, sang very small
in a chorus, capped all the fellows diligently, and paid his battels to
the minute. He was known to have asked twice for the key of the library,
put down his name for the senior tutor's pet lecture in "Cornelius
Nepos," bought the principal's sermon on the "Via Media," and was
suspected of having tried to read it. He was not clever enough to sneer
at the tutors, or stupid enough to disgust them. He was too sleepy to
keep late hours, too fat to pull in the boat, too stingy to give
supper-parties. How on earth came the fellows not to like John Brown? "A
most respectable man," the principal always said he was. "Sir," said he
to his anxious father, when, at the end of his second term, he took the
op