Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/76

46 the older hands, upon "fresh young gentlemen," and strongly advised me to "sport my oak," or, in other words, to bar and lock my outer door. With dignity deeply hurt, I left the entrance wide open, and thrust a poker into the fire, determined to give all intruders the warmest possible reception. This was part and parcel of that unhappy education abroad. In English public schools, boys learn first "to take," and then "to give." They begin by being tossed, and then by tossing others in the blanket. Those were days when practical jokes were in full force. Happily it is now extinct. Every greenhorn coming to college or joining a regiment, was liable to the roughest possible treatment, and it was only by submitting with the utmost good humour, that he won the affection of his comrades, and was looked upon as a gentleman. But the practice also had its darker phase. It ruined many a prospect, and it lost many a life. The most amusing specimen that I ever saw was that of a charming youngster, who died soon after joining his Sepoy regiment. The oldsters tried to drink him under the table at mess, and had notably failed. About midnight, when he was enjoying his first sleep, he suddenly awoke and found a ring of spectral figures dancing round between his bed and the tent-walls. After a minute's reflection, he jumped up, seized a sheet, threw it over his shoulders, and joined the dancers, saying, "If this is the fashion I suppose I must do it also." The jokers, baffled a second time, could no nothing but knock him down and run away.

The example of the larky Marquis of Waterford, seemed to authorize all kinds of fantastic tricks. The legend was still fresh, that he had painted the Dean of Christ Church's door red, because that formidable dignitary had objected to his wearing "pink" in High Street. Another, and far more inexcusable prank, was his sending all the accoucheurs in the town, to the house of a middle-aged maiden lady, whose father, a don, had offended him. In the colleges they did not fly at such high game, but they cruelly worried everything in the shape of a freshman. One unfortunate youth, a fellow who had brought with him a dozen of home-made wine, elder and cowslip, was made shockingly tight by brandy being mixed with his port, and was put to bed with all his bottles disposed on different parts of his person. Another, of æsthetic tastes, prided himself upon his china, and found it next morning all strewed in pieces about his bed. A third, with carroty whiskers, had them daubed with mustard, also while in a state of insensibility, and had to have them fall, yellow, next morning under a barber's hands.

I caused myself to be let down by a rope into the Master of Balliol's garden, plucked up some of the finest flowers by the roots,