ollege, Cambridge. My father was rich enough to have let me go up in
the higher rank of a pensioner, but he had lately grown avaricious; he
thought that I was extravagant; he made me a sizar, perhaps to spite me.
Then, for the first time, those inequalities in life which the Frenchman
had dinned into my ears met me practically. A sizar! another name for a
dog! I had such strength, health, and spirits, that I had more life
in my little finger than half the fellow-commoners--genteel,
spindle-shanked striplings, who might have passed for a collection of
my grandfather's walking-canes--bad in their whole bodies. And I often
think," continued Gawtrey, "that health and spirits have a great deal
to answer for! When we are young we so far resemble savages who are
Nature's young people--that we attach prodigious value to physical
advantages. My feats of strength and activity--the clods I thrashed--and
the railings I leaped--and the boat-races I won--are they not written
in the chronicle of St. John's? These achievements inspired me with an
extravagant sense of my own superiority; I could not but despise the
rich fellows whom I could have blown down with a sneeze. Nevertheless,
there was an impassable barrier between me and them--a sizar was not a
proper associate for the favourites of fortune! But there was one young
man, a year younger myself, of high birth, and the heir to considerable
wealth, who did not regard me with the same supercilious insolence as
the rest; his very rank, perhaps, made him indifferent to the little
conventional formalities which influence persons who cannot play at
football with this round world; he was the wildest youngster in the
university--lamp-breaker--tandem-driver--mob-fighter--a very devil in
short--clever, but not in the reading line--small and slight, but brave
as a lion. Congenial habits made us intimate, and I loved him like a
brother--better than a brother--as a dog loves his master. In all our
rows I covered him with my body. He had but to say to me, 'Leap into the
water,' and I would not have stopped to pull off my coat. In short,
I loved him as a proud man loves one who stands betwixt him and
contempt,--as an affectionate man loves one who stands between him
and solitude. To cut short a long story: my friend, one dark night,
committed an outrage against discipline, of the most unpardonable
character. There was a sanctimonious, grave old fellow of the College,
crawling home from a tea-party