er monotonous. I feed that brood of chickens,
which have taken upon themselves to come into the world this unnatural
weather, with bread-crumbs out of my window twice a-day. Ah! I see the
old hen has only four to-day; one is gone since yesterday, and one the
day before; there's consumption in the family, that's plain; and they
have always wet feet; I want Mrs Nutt to make them worsted socks, and
to let me put Burgundy pitch-plasters on their throats, but she
won't."

"But come," said Chesterton, "suppose you give us some lunch, Brown;
'_prome reconditum Caecubum_'--(I'm getting desperately classical;)
that is, being freely translated--lift up that red baise drapery of
yours, and let's taste the tap."

The tap was tasted, and approved of; so was the Stilton: and then we
sat over the fire for an hour, and smoked some of the Silvas: then we
paid a visit to Mrs Nutt in her _penetralia_, and astonished her with
our acquaintance with dairy matters; hazarded a criticism or two upon
the pigs, which were well received, and were not so fortunate in our
attempts to cultivate an intimacy with the incorruptible Boxer; and
then set off on our return to Oxford, persuading Brown to start with
us, as the afternoon was fine, in order to freshen his faculties by a
stroll in the High Street.

Shorn, indeed, of all the glories of a full term, in which it had so
lately shone, and looking doubly cold, cheerless, and deserted, in all
the sloppy dirtiness of half-melted snow, was that never-equalled, and
never-to-be-forgotten street! which the stranger gazes on with
somewhat of an envious admiration, the freshman with an awful kind of
delight--which the departing bachelor of arts quits with a
half-concealed regret, and which the occasionally-returning master
re-enters with feelings which are perhaps a mixture of all these; a
stranger's admiration, an emancipated school-boy's delight, and a
regret, either mellowed by passing years into a tender recollection,
or blunted into indifference by altered habits, or embittered by
severed ties and disappointed hopes. We strolled once up and down its
long sweep, but there was nothing to invite a longer promenade.
Cigar-dealers stood at their shop-doors, or leaned over their
counters, with their hands in their breeches-pockets, smoking their
own genuine Havannahs in desperate independence: here a livery-stable
keeper, with a couple of questionable friends, rattled a tandem over
the stones, as if such t