When Plumtree left college, the head master, who, like many other head masters, had rather a weakness for a pickle in his heart, took him kindly by the hand, and recommended him, with perfect single-mindedness, to devote his energies to the habits of beasts and birds, and the study of comparative anatomy, “the only mental labour, Plumtree,” added the don, with extreme kindness, “for which you seem either qualified or inclined.”
A lad of such tastes was pretty sure to be sent to one of the universities: and after an interval of a delicious twelvewmonth at home, during which period of relaxation the young ’squire not only destroyed every rat in every barn within a day’s ride of The Ashes, but also made acquaintance with every tap of beer, and struck up a friendship with every blackguard, within the same distance, this promising acolyte was entered at Brazen-Nose, and went up to keep his terms at Alma Mater, and acquire whatever knowledge was most adapted to his intellectual hunger, at that repository of learning.
Here, it is needless to observe, he rowed a great deal, smoked a great deal, drank an enormous quantity of beer, and read not the least in the world. He acquired, however, considerable proficiency in the difficult art of driving a tandem, and could conceal boots and breeches under loose pantaloons, when attending chapel on a hunting morning, more dexterously than any undergraduate of his year.
He kept the drag, too, for one season, but found his mode of life too dissipated to admit of the nerve requisite for that amusement. These dare-devil young gentlemen, you see, go out for the express purpose of breaking each other’s necks. They ride, of course, directly _at_ the leading hound; but that quadruped, generally an old stager, and stimulated by a red-herring steeped in aniseed, gives them plenty to do before they can catch him. It is a point of honour, I am given to understand, to turn away from nothing; and the man who can _get through_ his horse quickest, is esteemed to have won the laurels of the day. It is scarcely possible to imagine an education more calculated to make a _horseman_, and spoil a _sportsman_, than the Oxford drag.
When Plumtree renounced the mastership of this dashing establishment, he devoted himself exclusively to driving, and became, if possible, more _beery_ than before. For lectures he cherished an unaccountable aversion, nor was it likely that the wit and learning of the schools would prove very tempting to a man whose heart was habitually in the cellars.