204 OCCASIONAL HAPPY THOUGHTS. 



fore, I neither came out with honours, nor without them. 

 In short, I didn't come out at all, except out of the Senate 

 House before the examination had concluded. 



After this mistake, I thought that the best thing I could 

 do, to prevent a recurrence of that accident, was to go away 

 and read. I chose Brown of Corpus for my tutor, or 

 " coach," as the word is, and of course discovered afterwards 

 that I ought to have gone to Smith of Sidney. I had a 

 narrow squeak of it with Brown, who had invented a 

 favourite formula for polishing off the most difficult equa- 

 tions. It was apparently so easy that I left it to the last, 

 and then found that any attempt at 7neinoria technica was 

 utterly unsuited to my peculiar faculties. 



When the time for my degree came, I went in for mathe- 

 matical honours, and came out in the " PoL^^ However, I 

 was able to write B.A. at the end of my name, which I dare 

 say I have done once or twice since, to see how it looked, 

 but without any definite object. 



The last examination I found myself obliged to undergo 

 was for the law. It had been determined by my uncle and 

 a couple of aunts, that as two of my cousins were in the 

 army, another in the navy (always going to join his ship, 

 and perpetually being somewhere else on leave, as far as I 

 could -nake out), a fourth in the City at Lloyd's (where he 

 is always ready for luncheon with a friend) and a fifth in 

 Liverpool, where he is making a colossal fortune out of 

 something which requires him to be for the greater part of 

 his time at his London club — it was decided, I say, by them, 

 that I should become a banker. 



