o much
exhausted by their efforts to catch them that they were themselves bumped
by First Trinity at the next corner. Butler wrote home about it:

11 March, 1857. Dear Mamma: My foreboding about steering was on the
last day nearly verified by an accident which was more deplorable than
culpable the effects of which would have been ruinous had not the
presence of mind of No. 7 in the boat rescued us from the very jaws of
defeat. The scene is one which never can fade from my remembrance and
will be connected always with the gentlemanly conduct of the crew in
neither using opprobrious language nor gesture towards your
unfortunate son but treating him with the most graceful forbearance;
for in most cases when an accident happens which in itself is but
slight, but is visited with serious consequences, most people get
carried away with the impression created by the last so as to entirely
forget the accidental nature of the cause and if we had been quite
bumped I should have been ruined, as it is I get praise for coolness
and good steering as much as and more than blame for my accident and
the crew are so delighted at having rowed a race such as never was
seen before that they are satisfied completely. All the spectators
saw the race and were delighted; another inch and I should never have
held up my head again. One thing is safe, it will never happen again.

The _Eagle_, "a magazine supported by members of St. John's College,"
issued its first number in the Lent term of 1858; it contains an article
by Butler "On English Composition and Other Matters," signed "Cellarius":

Most readers will have anticipated me in admitting that a man should
be clear of his meaning before he endeavours to give it any kind of
utterance, and that, having made up his mind what to say, the less
thought he takes how to say it, more than briefly, pointedly and
plainly, the better.

From this it appears that, when only just over twenty-two, Butler had
already discovered and adopted those principles of writing from which he
never departed.

In the fifth number of the _Eagle_ is an article, "Our Tour," also signed
"Cellarius"; it is an account of a tour made in June, 1857, with a friend
whose name he Italianized into Giuseppe Verdi, through France into North
Italy, and was written, so he says, to show how they got so much into
three weeks and spent only 25 pounds; they did not,