SOME GENTLEMAN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 173 



him ! on the box too Ralph ! Harry, you beast ! consider my 

 station! D n it, this is too cruel. Sir Tiffin sees me! If I 

 were but inside ! Ralph !" 



Ralph protested but without avail. Black Harry would not be 

 checked in his friendly efforts to make up the breach which he sup- 

 posed to exist between his friend, and his friend's " particular 

 friend," by a display of his own incomparable skill in blowing out 

 the lamps as if by magic, for it was scarcely possible to detect 

 the lightning-like lash of his whip. Before Ralph could perforce 

 resume the reins, notwithstanding the attraction of Black Harry's 

 skill, I had become absorbed. Sir Tiffin Mongooz whose " local 

 habitation," since his return with a large fortune from India, I had 

 vainly attempted to discover was my schoolfellow ; we had been at 

 the University together ; there was a singular document in existence be- 

 tween myself and him, which, now, that I could get at him, might 

 realize me a golden crop. Judging from the flannels, with which his 

 head was enveloped, he could not be well. So much the better, but 

 then the banker and Gruel ! I quietly thrust my hand into the 

 rhubarb-coloured coat, took out a pocket book, and began to scan its 

 contents, and the memoranda it contained, with the quiet careless air 

 of one to whom they were familiar. I have said in a preceding spe- 

 cimen of my autobiography, that no men are so liable to gross 

 errors in minor particulars as your most accomplished scoundrels, 

 and that these errors luckily for the world, now and then hang 

 them. Had Gruel as many lives as a cat, there was enough in the 

 pocket book to put him out of the way by the necessary num- 

 ber of marginal notes of " sus : per col :" in so many judges' 

 copies of calendars. Instead of going on to an outport, I alighted at 

 once : but, to confess the truth, sought a few hours repose, being 

 completely undecided, as to whom, in justice to myself, I should 

 operate on first sleek Erasmus Gruel, Ralph's " particular friend," 

 or that social crony of my youthful days, Brigadier General Sir 

 Tiffin Mongooz. 



ON A SCHOOL BOY 

 Pronouncing the River Eurtpus, Euripus, 



Venit ad Euripum juvenis, paulumque moratus, 

 Ut bene transiret, corripuit fluvium. 



