432 TOM RAFFLES. 



punishing himself. He must come out to dinner ; and the patience 

 of a Cambridge dun is almost a passion with him. Reader, you have 

 heard the tale of a dog who pointed a hare in her seat, and who stood 

 stanch at her (as she dared not stir) until both were reduced to 

 naked skeletons. It is not true ; but it is a faithful allegory of a 

 Cambridge dun, who, if a man were to keep closeted until he starved, 

 would share the same fate with him at the door. Poor Tom could 

 never obey the bell for hall, without encountering at the first step 

 one of these Anthropophagi. He had been at that time one of my 

 private pupils for more than two years, but, I believe, had never at- 

 tended his hour more than half-a-dozen times. I was therefore asto- 

 nished one morning at his gravely proposing to attend me regularly, 

 if I would take him from three to four, the hour before dinner. I 

 made arrangements with my other pupils to accommodate him ; and 

 his punctuality was surprising. But he never read any thing not 

 he, except a novel or a newspaper which he brought with him. The 

 object of the rogue was, to secure my company every day on his road 

 to hall, as a sort of safeguard against his enemies, well knowing that 

 no dun dare attack him while under the convoy of a Fellow. At the 

 close of his third year I spoke seriously to him on the subject of his 

 debts ; and advised him, rather than lead such a mad dog's life, to 

 lay the state of his affairs candidly before his guardian, and implore 

 him to settle them. He shook his head, as much as to intimate that 

 it would be useless; but he promised to follow my advice, which, to 

 do him justice, he always did when I neither taxed his indolence nor 

 interrupted his enjoyments. 



On his return to keep his tenth and last term, I asked him how he 

 had succeeded in his application for an arrangement with his cre- 

 ditors. His guardian, it appeared, had found his office by no means 

 an agreeable one; and, as Tom in a few months would emerge from 

 his minority, wished him to settle with his creditors himself. " In 

 the meanwhile," said Tom, " I will pay them off, if not for their 

 goods, yet, if there be any exactness in the arts and sciences, for the 

 torment they have given me." I did not comprehend his meaning, 

 and was too busy to inquire into it at the time. I called upon him, 

 however, a few days afterwards, and was surprised to observe that 

 he sported (what I never saw before at an under-graduate's rooms) a 

 door-bell. To add to the eccentricity of the thing, there was this 

 curious direction on a small brass plate above the handle DON'T 

 RING THE BELL. The outer door being open (a sure sign that Tom 

 was flown), I walked in without ceremony to leave my card, and 

 was still more puzzled by perceiving in one corner of the room an 

 electrical machine. " What the deuce," thought I, " can such an in- 

 curious fellow want with such an apparatus as that ?" But, as I am 

 not very expert at a graphic description, I must beg leave to give 

 the denouement as related to me by one of the sufferers that non- 

 pareil of duns, Mr. S. the horse-dealer though perhaps I may in 

 some measure miss the peculiar graces of his phraseology. 



" You see, Sir," said Mr. S., " that I was just going to call on Mr. 

 Raffles, and I was in a bit of a hurry, for little B., the tailor, and old 

 M., the barber, was close behind me, and ' first come, first served/ 



