C>62 
LETTERS TO A STUDENT. 
the others. Their example is followed by a certain number of 
their fellow-pupils. Unfortunately it is not the talented nor the 
industrious that are most generally imitated. There are always 
a few daring dissipated characters, who do things in an impudent 
off-hand manner, and demand the approbation and the imitation 
of their fellows. Those I allude to are oftener in the tavern than 
in the dissecting-room. They speak of plays, actors, sights, 
and politics, oftener than of professional matters. They are often 
absent, and, when present, they look and listen with the indif- 
ference which marks a fool. The worst of them are obscene, 
riotous, prone to boast of their exploits in “drinking, fencing, 
swearing, quarrelling, drabbing,” and other vices, in which no 
man can participate without permanent contamination. Cha- 
racters of this kind are to be studiously avoided. They waste 
your time, and do you harm otherwise. They can give you no aid 
in your studies, or, if they could, you should reject it. It is dan- 
gerous even to know them. They never succeed in business. 
They start with a great deal of flourishing ; they are to carry 
all before them. But in a short time they betray their vice, 
and few men are inclined to look for skill where there is no virtue. 
Suspicion once excited, ignorance is soon discovered ; and, in a 
little while, your College dash-away is a beggarly bankrupt. 
There is generally a good sprinkling of tom-foolery among 
Collegians. Your true fop is a man of great pretensions. He 
knows to a hair’s-breadth how much of the waistcoat should be 
left unbuttoned. He is learned in tailoring and barbering; and 
he hath read “ The whole art of dress.” He has ring's on his 
fingers, hair on his upper lip, an eye-glass dangling from his 
neck, and a head on his shoulders originally intended for a 
barber’s block. Your coxcomb is a very fine gentleman. He 
cannot, indeed, dissect, because dissection hardens the hands, 
soils the rings, and is altogether a nasty sort of employment. 
Beading gives him the headach ; lectures are a bore ; and the 
debating-room is just a place for sport and trifling. 
What these gentry do at College nobody can tell, unless it be 
to squander away the money which they never earned. They 
pretend, indeed, to be learning something about the horse : other 
animals they abhor. They ridicule those who venture to make 
any allusion to the cow, or to the dog ; and to speak of swine, is 
perfectly shocking. I have seen one of these puppies go into a 
sort of hysterical fit merely because he saw a fellow-pupil reading 
an account of nasal gleet in ducks. He did not altogether escape 
the rebuke he deserved : if now alive — for these empty pates 
are seldom traceable through life — he still remembers what was 
said. 
