are cut off from the delights of the table, and are
restricted to a poached egg and a glass of water, like to see people
with good appetites; and, as the next best thing to being amused at a
pantomime one's-self is to see one's children enjoy it, I hope there may
be no degree of age or experience to which mortal may attain, when he
shall become such a glum philosopher as not to be pleased by the sight
of happy youth. Coming back a few weeks since from a brief visit to the
old University of Oxbridge, where my friend Mr. Arthur Pendennis passed
some period of his life, I made the journey in the railroad by the side
of a young fellow at present a student of Saint Boniface. He had got an
exeat somehow, and was bent on a day's lark in London: he never stopped
rattling and talking from the commencement of the journey until its
close (which was a great deal too soon for me, for I never was tired of
listening to the honest young fellow's jokes and cheery laughter); and
when we arrived at the terminus nothing would satisfy him but a hansom
cab, so that he might get into town the quicker, and plunge into the
pleasures awaiting him there. Away the young lad went whirling, with
joy lighting up his honest face; and as for the reader's humble servant,
having but a small carpet-bag, I got up on the outside of the omnibus,
and sate there very contentedly between a Jew-pedlar smoking bad cigars,
and a gentleman's servant taking care of a poodle-dog, until we got
our fated complement of passengers and boxes, when the coachman drove
leisurely away. We weren't in a hurry to get to town. Neither one of us
was particularly eager about rushing into that near smoking Babylon, or
thought of dining at the Club that night, or dancing at the Casino. Yet
a few years more, and my young friend of the railroad will be not a whit
more eager.

There were no railroads made when Arthur Pendennis went to the famous
University of Oxbridge; but he drove thither in a well-appointed coach,
filled inside and out with dons, gownsmen, young freshmen about to
enter, and their guardians, who were conducting them to the university.
A fat old gentleman, in grey stockings, from the City, who sate by Major
Pendennis inside the coach, having his pale-faced son opposite, was
frightened beyond measure when he heard that the coach had been driven
for a couple of stages by young Mr. Foker, of Saint Boniface College,
who was the friend of all men, including coachmen, and cou