And then, in the midst of a merry laugh or a lightly-utter'd jest, Talk of the hem! why there she is!-that's her knock, as sure as a gun! Now you take your cue from me, old man, and I'll show you a little fun : Bessie, my dear, this gentleman here is a very old friend of mineMr. Smith, Mrs. C.; Mrs. C., Mr. Smith-in the briefless-barrister line! Ha, ha! why, where is your memory, dear? As the singers say, "Try back." Have you quite forgotten our old playmate, the illustrious Dr. Jack? Hullo! what now? Well, upon my word, this really is a surprise!— Kissing another fellow, by Jove, under my very eyes! Only look at her now, old man—there's a picture for you, eh? ing there, And we'll make it a jolly meeting to-night, with Dr. Jack in the chair!' EDWIN COLLER. COLLEGE SCOUTS BY ONE OF THEMSELVES How vast is the difference between the present position of an Oxford scout and that which the members of that profession' occupied even as little as twenty-much more two hundred-years ago! I cannot say exactly what the habits, perquisites, pay, and private feelings of my predecessors were as long ago as the last-named interval, but I strongly suspect that they were far from enjoying anything like the good places which old fellows like myself can recollect as our once valued possession, and our now (alas!) departed glory. Probably the artist-I think Mr. Cuthbert Bede-was not far from the truth, who sketched an imaginary dialogue between an undergraduate and his servant of that period as follows: The pasty which your honour left part of at breakfast, I will serve up an your honour pleaseth at supper-time.' I thank thee, Peter, it pleaseth me hugely.' All that kind of thing had disappeared when I entered on my duties and privileges-first as scout's boy, afterwards, a few years later, as dignified with the title of scout in Durham College, Oxford. I was the son of a scout, and my father, also the son of a scout, had been as long familiar with the walls of Durham College, and the portraits of the worthies which adorned its hall, as the warden himself. In fact, as with the Egyptians in Herodotus, of whom I have heard my masters speak, among whom a cook brought up his son to be a cook, a fisherman to be a fisherman, and so on, the scouts had for generations in Oxford brought up their sons to what they instinctively found to be an easy way of earning a livelihood, that was becoming yearly more profitable, although I'll take very good care I don't bring up any son of mine to the noble profession. But my family had been for generations scouts of Durham College, Oxford, and in my early days there can be no doubt that my father was quite right to bring me up to his own line of business. Common-room man, porter, manciple indeed! Call it promotion to be put into any of those places?. I always found that those worthies thought a good deal of themselves, and were rather given to look down upon us scouts as inferior beings. We could slap our pockets, and pocket with a good grace whatever little affronts might come from such a quarter. As to the cooks, their perquisites and profits were not to be looked down upon; but we could only envy them, as their education was of a totally different kind from ours; and whereas our profits came principally from leavings and other little matters, which came under the general name of 'perquisites,' theirs came from sources to which I can only look up with respectful admiration. That their places were for the most part really worth having, is shown by such facts as the following. Our cook had come to us from a larger college, in which he had held that much-envied situation with both profit and approbation for some years past; but on their proposal to put him on a fixed salary of 300l. a year with no profits and pickings, he offered himself and his services to our fellows directly he heard that old Higgs had retired into private life. They knew, from frequent visits to the high table at the college he was then serving, that he could send up as good a dinner as any cook in the university; that he could scallop oysters to perfection; that he knew to a turn when a wild-duck was done; and that no one could come near him in grilling a blade-bone or a turkey's drumstick. We thought in those good old days no little about such qualifications for the office of cook, and scarcely less as to social qualities and general ability to be useful and pleasant in elections to our fellowships. On one occasion when a fellowship was thrown open, there being no candidate in our own college qualified according to the statutes (which had not then been knocked on the head by any University Commission), Watkins of St. Botolph's came in for it. Down went old Davison, our senior fellow, to St. Botolph's to make inquiries about him, just when he knew that a lot of the St. Botolph's fellows would be in the common-room looking at the morning papers. 'Watkins fit for it?' was the surprised question of the assembly-they always prided themselves on being rather intellectual at St. Botolph's, though in reality they liked good living with its et ceteras as well as any senior men in the university-why, of course he is. Didn't he take a first-class?' 'Perhaps so,' was the cool reply of the imperturbable old Davison; but at Durham we don't want merely a first-class man. We want at Durham a man who can make himself useful at dinner and agreeable after dinner. Now, can Watkins carve a goose and play a rubber?' And on a proper voucher for these two qualifications, which, with all their intellectuality, the St. Botolph's men didn't undervalue any more than did we at Durham, Davison snuffled out suo more (I've picked up some Latin too), 'Well, then, good-morning; as he took a first-class into the bargain, I think I shall vote for him.' Watkins got the fellowship. Davison was a character in his way, as perhaps you've found out from the above. On another occasion of a college election-not that he despised ability, though he hated priggishness-he said, in reference to a new light of the school of advanced thinkers,' 'I'd as soon vote for my walking-stick as for one of your intellectuals.' All this may appear to be a digression, but it is not so. I wish to show the principle on which appointments to office were made in our college. They were always made in reference to certain special qualifications. I, for instance, should certainly not have got my place merely because I was my father's son-and that fact did tell in my appointment-had I not possessed other special recommendations. But when I entered on the scene of college life, my father was growing old, and as old Davison found that I had taken kindly to some special avocations for which he had always been noted, Davison made a point of getting me appointed my father's permanent deputy when he became past actual work, and his successor when he died. Not but what my father would often willingly come up to the old place, after he had given up work, to help me; that is to say, to take the direction of everything upon himself, if I had a breakfast party on, or a luncheon, or a supper, especially if the entertainer was old Davison, for he and my father were mutually favourites of each other. The said Mr. Davison used to declare that my father could brew better cup, flip, bishop, punch, and drinks generally, whether festive or cooling, than any common-room man in Oxford; and he was not far wrong either. And accordingly he generally preferred the beverage of my father in these matters to any that our common-room could send out. And it was my proficiency in these matters, joined of course to unimpeachable honesty and unassailable respectability, that secured me his patronage. Honesty and respectability, indeed!-and in a scout ?-I hear some wiseacre say. Yes, most certainly. Let me tell you that most of us bring up our families as respectably, and with as much regard to truth and honesty, as any of our betters. As to honesty, of course there are those who call it dishonest to take any perquisite whatever, however usual or allowable; but any master of the most ordinary liberality would never blame his servant or consider him grasping for taking his fair, customary, and recognised perquisites. I am sure, for instance, that neither my father nor myself would ever have dreamed of appropriating an uncut pigeon-pie after a breakfast party, unless our master had said we might take it, as a generous master would not unfrequently do, on finding that we kept an eye open to his interest as well as our own. And we never thought of touching the remains of a breakfast commons of bread, which, with a commons of cheese and a radish or two or a little water-cress, would make a good lunch for many of our masters, without any unnecessary increase of bread batells. It's quite as much by little things of this kind that batell bills run high as by any actual extravagance. And if we treat our masters in this sort of way, it's wonderful to see the sort of friendly feeling that springs up between us and them; and then who is it that they inquire for first of all, years afterwards, when they come up to the old place? Why, the Edward Miller, or John Harris, or William Peasley, or Ted Vickers, who 6 used to wait on them when they were undergraduates, to be sure. I know I felt very proud one day, when three of my old masters walked into college in the middle of the Long and batelled for some lunch in their own names, that I was able to offer them a bottle of claret to drink my health in, as I waited on them. And they were not ashamed to take it either, for they knew I meant it and was glad to give it them. Of course there are bad as well as good servants, and I've known some cool and shameful things done by them. I remember a servant one day-I'll call him James-whom his master caught doing an outrageous thing. His master came in one day from afternoon chapel a little earlier than James expected, and found James just putting away his decanters in the cheffoniere, having poured out for himself a glass of port and a glass of sherry, which were standing on the table. On being asked what he meant by it, he very coolly said, Why, the fact is, sir, that I felt rather sick, sir, and—I meant to have told you of it, sir-but I took the liberty of taking a glass of your wine, sir.' Very likely he meant to have told his master, over one of my shoulders, and I won't say which,' as Miss Moucher says; and the said master, with the remark that, if he felt sick, a mixture of port and sherry was hardly likely to do him good, let him carry off the two glasses of wine, like a good-natured fool as he was. And I also knew a scout in St. Boniface whom his master, a fellow of the college, coming up one day unexpectedly in the middle of the Long, found entertaining a party of friends in his room. And one day the afore-mentioned James, of happy memory, had the coolness to lend the room of one of his masters, an M.A., during his temporary absence, to an undergraduate for a supper-party on a Saturday night during full term. The non-academical reader may not at first see the full beauty of this proceeding. James foresaw that there would probably be a little noisy singing, which might excite the notice of the warden or one of the tutors, but which, whatever remark it might occasion, would at least, as coming from the rooms of an M.A., not be liable to interruption. For this little escapade, however, James happily got the 'precious good wigging' that he deserved. His master-the same, by the bye, whose wine he had so calmly appropriated—good-natured as he was, was no fool, and on returning from his country duty on the Monday, soon detected signs of the festivity, which all James's sharpness had been unable to remove, especially in a smell of tobaccosmoke, which, smoker as he was, he could not fail to detect to a very unusual extent. On inquiry, James acknowledged that he had ventured to lend the room for the purpose he had mentioned; and on finding himself fairly in the wrong box, thought he had better eat Lumble pie with an appetite, and, apologising very submissively, hoped that the matter would go no farther, as he was afraid that if the warden came to hear of it, he would lose his place; a result |