as hard hit by the charms of some fair stranger, he never thought of
expressing his admiration otherwise than by piteous looks, directed at
her from an immense distance, out of shot for an opera-glass; when in
her immediate vicinity his motto was that of the Breton baron--_mourir
muet_. Claret-cup flowed and Champagne sparkled, powerless to raise him
to the audacity of an avowal. Under the woods of Nuneham, in the gardens
of Blenheim, amid the crowd of the Commemoration ball, the same deep
river of diffidence flowed between him and his happiness. My own idea is
that, after all was over, the silent ones, like Jacques' stricken deer,
used to "go weep" over chances lost and opportunities neglected. With
waitresses at wayside inns, _et id genus omne_, they were tolerably
self-possessed and reliant; though even there "a thousand might well be
stopped by three," and I would have backed an intelligent barmaid
against the field at odds; indeed, I think I have seen a security nearly
allied to contempt on the fine features of a certain "lone _star_" as
she parried--so easily!--the compliments and repartees of a dozen
assailants at once, accounted, in their own quadrangles, Millamours of
the darkest dye.

Guy accounted for this unfortunate peculiarity by saying that a cigar
in the mouth was the normal state of many of these men; so that, when
circumstances debarred them from the Havana courage, they lost all
presence of mind, and, being unable to retreat under cover of the smoke,
lapsed instantly into a sullen despair, suffering themselves to be shot
down unresistingly. Perhaps some future philosopher will favor us with a
better solution to this important problem in physics; I know of none.

After all, the reading men did best, though we did not think so then,
when we saw them creeping into morning chapel jaded and heavy-eyed,
after a debauch over Herodotus or the Stagyrite. They had a purpose in
view, at all events, and, I believe, were placidly content during the
progress of its attainment--in the seventh heaven when their hopes were
crowned by a First, or even a Second. True; the pace was too good for
some of the half-bred ones, and such as could not stand the training,
who departed, to fade away rapidly in the old house at home, or to pine,
slowly, but very surely, in remote curacies.

Some of these, I fancy, must have sympathized with Madame de Stael's
consumptive niece, who answered to the question, "Why she was weeping
al