"I should lose him as soon as possible," Fred went on.
"I don't think that would be very easy," I answered, "and I don't believe he is a bad sort really."
"I'll bet he never came back from Woodstock in five-and-twenty minutes," Foster said.
If I had to describe in detail the first two or three weeks of my life at Oxford, I think that accusations might be brought against me of having eaten too much, or at any rate too often. Fortunately I had a good digestion, I cannot imagine the fate of a dyspeptic freshman if he had to attend a series of Oxford breakfasts. I have, however, only once encountered a fresher who suffered from dyspepsia, and if there was any other man so afflicted at St. Cuthbert's he probably did not admit his complaint. For we were supposed to be very cultivated at St. Cuthbert's, and at that time it was not good form to hold a roll-call of our diseases at breakfast, to discuss surgical operations at luncheon, and to provide tales of sea-sickness by way of humour at dinner. We kept our complaints to ourselves and were in truth more than a little ashamed of them.
St. Cuthbert's had a reputation of its own. Men in other colleges criticized us very freely. They said that we were prigs, that the 'Varsity boat would never be any good as long as there was a St. Cuthbert's man in it, and other pleasant things which did not annoy me, since I, having been a butt for much personal criticism all my life, can even get some satisfaction from finding that a crowd of other people are as bad as I am. Besides, we had nearly one hundred and fifty men at St. Cuthbert's, and I thought it was absolutely stupid to say we were all prigs and that none of us could row.
The truth of the matter was, as far as I could judge, that at St. Cuthbert's there were often a large number of clever men, and clever men when young can get on one's nerves most terribly. It is all right for men to be clever when they are old or even middle-aged, then allowances are made for them and they may be as odd as they please. But if any one happens to be clever when he is at Oxford, he will have to watch himself closely or he will be called either a genius or a lunatic, and the one is almost as fatal as the other.