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 normal bump of veneration, but they were all rather raw. Why is it that men who are quite leaders and bloods in their way at Oxford are so much at sea when they come out to start life in the world at large? A boy from Sandhurst three or four years younger is fifty times more au fait with life. I think it is partly that the Universities are too motherly. They call themselves 'Alma Mater,' I'm told, and undoubtedly they coddle up their sons too much. I know there are an awful lot of restrictions so long as you are in statu pupillari. I got that phrase from Bob, who is just going up to Cambridge, so I don't vouch for its correctness, but anyway, it looks very well. I believe the poor boys have to pay twopence to get into college after nine o'clock at night and a shilling after eleven, while no one has ever dared to stay out after twelve o'clock, the penalties are said to be so awful. Now that would paralyse me all day if I thought I had to be in by nine o'clock at night or else pay twopence. I'm not mean, but I should resent that twopence. It would right down annoy me. As for getting leave to run up to town or anything like that, you have to resort to subterfuge, which is very bad for the character, and kill off every grandmother and aunt you've got, and then invent more—of the latter, of course, I mean—to the number of which a merciful Providence has set no limit.

Still, all this doesn't quite explain why a subaltern of twenty has a bigger outlook on life than a Varsity man of twenty-four. Of course, as a rule, the latter has much more in the way of brains, everyone will