34 THE TEINITY FOOT BEAGLES 



never disappointment there is no sport. Good days are those which 

 exceed expectation, or they would not be good ; and the red letters 

 of the good days would not stand out in bold relief were there not 

 the deep black shadows of the rotten, joyless ones. 



" Comparisons are odorous," as a general rule. Nevertheless, one 

 can never describe anything that happens at Cambridge without 

 the question arising, " How do they manage these things at Oxlbrd ? " 

 This topic of perennial interest descends even to the smallest matters, 

 and such material details as, for example, kitchen management. 1 

 remember once in my early youth, when I was making abortive 

 attempts to enter Woolwich, passing through Oxford on my way up 

 to town from my home in Herefordshire. It was Exeat Day as we 

 should call it, and swarms of undergraduates got into the carriage 

 and talked weird slang about " toggers " and other obscure mysteries. 

 I remember feeling on that occasion a sort of secret pride, and saying 

 to those undergraduates in my thoughts, " You are 'Varsity men, no 

 doubt, and that is a very fine thing to be, but I shall be an officer, 

 and wear a blue tunic and a helmet with a gold knob atop, and 

 spurs ; and I shall ride through my native county with my Battery 

 on the march, when we go to the Black Mountains for target 

 practice, while you will be mere civilians ! " That was an " odorous " 

 comparison, such as one is wise to keep to oneself, for the comfort of 

 one's secret self-conceit is apt to be spoiled by publication ; and the 

 world so seldom takes us at our own valuation. I, however, sacrifice 

 myself to history, and confess the consequent fall ! I also remember 

 in the midst of the pandemonium one of the undergraduates saying, 

 " I wonder how they manage at Cambridge on these occasions," and 

 my thinking, " Yes, of course, there is a place called Cambridge, and 

 it has a station with a platform, and somethiug of the same sort 

 must be going on there too." The thought was the more vague 

 because I " was Oxford," as schoolboys say, in those days. Why such 

 isolated and trivial events stand out so vividly from an otherwise 

 blurred memory 1 cannot say, but they do ; and this one is worth 

 preserving, because it shows how utterly different frora one's expecta- 

 tions actual life is. Who could have then dreamt that I should 

 have come to be a 'Varsity man and a civilian, and to make com- 



