ng tribes; with endless monotony, in which men
sometimes go mad--he had to ask himself if these were to be cheerfully
endured because, in the short summer, the air is heavenly, the rivers
and lakes are full of fish, the flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is
pouring down, and all is gaiety and pleasant turmoil; because there is
good shooting in the autumn, and the smell of the land is like a garden,
and hardy fruits and flowers are at hand.

That is a question which was asked William Rufus Holly once upon a time.

William Rufus Holly, often called "Averdoopoy," sometimes "Sleeping
Beauty," always Billy Rufus, had had a good education. He had been to
high school and to college, and he had taken one or two prizes en route
to graduation; but no fame travelled with him, save that he was the
laziest man of any college year for a decade. He loved his little
porringer, which is to say that he ate a good deal; and he loved to read
books, which is not to say that he loved study; he hated getting out of
bed, and he was constantly gated for morning chapel. More than once he
had sweetly gone to sleep over his examination papers. This is not
to say that he failed at his examinations--on the contrary, he always
succeeded; but he only did enough to pass and no more; and he did
not wish to do more than pass. His going to sleep at examinations
was evidence that he was either indifferent or self-indulgent, and it
certainly showed that he was without nervousness. He invariably roused
himself, or his professor roused him, a half-hour before the papers
should be handed in, and, as it were by a mathematical calculation, he
had always done just enough to prevent him being plucked.

He slept at lectures, he slept in hall, he slept as he waited his turn
to go to the wicket in a cricket match, and he invariably went to sleep
afterwards. He even did so on the day he had made the biggest score,
in the biggest game ever played between his college and the pick of the
country; but he first gorged himself with cake and tea. The day he took
his degree he had to be dragged from a huge grandfather's chair, and
forced along in his ragged gown--"ten holes and twelve tatters"--to the
function in the convocation hall. He looked so fat and shiny, so balmy
and sleepy when he took his degree and was handed his prize for a poem
on Sir John Franklin, that the public laughed, and the college men in
the gallery began singing:

"Bye O, my baby,