Presently Mr. Horton asked us if he might give us some salmon-not collectively, but individually and properly, Lady Torquilin first; and we said he might. He did not help Lord Symonds, and relapsed himself, as it were, into an empty plate. It was Lady Torquilin's business to inquire if the young gentlemen were not well, or if salmon did not agree with them, and not mine; but while I privately agitated this matter, I unobservantly helped myself to mayonnaise. "I-I beg your pardon," said Mr. Sanders Horton, in a pink agony; "that's cream!" So it was, waiting in a beautiful old-fashioned silver pitcher the advent of those idylls that come after. It was a critical moment, for it instantly flashed upon me that the respectable scout had forgotten the mayonnaise, and that I had been the means of making Mr. Sanders Horton very uncomfortable indeed. Only one thing occurred to me to say, for which I hope I may be forgiven. "Yes," I returned, “we like it with fish in America." At which Mr. Horton looked interested and relieved. And I ate as much of the mixture as I could with a smile, though the salmon had undergone a vinegar treatment which made this difficult. "It is in Boston, is it not," remarked Lord Symonds, politely, "that the people live almost entirely upon beans?" And the conversation flowed quite generally until the advent of the fowl. It was a large, well-conditioned chicken, and when the young gentlemen, apparently by mutual consent, refrained from partaking of it, the situation had reached a degree of unreasonableness which was more than Lady Torquilin could endure.

"Do you intend to eat nothing?" she inquired, with the air of one who will accept no prevarications.

“Oh, we'd like to, but we can't," they replied, earnestly and simultaneously.

"We're still in training, you know," Lord Symonds went on. "Fellows have got to train pretty much on stodge." And at this juncture Mr. Horton solemnly cut two slices of the cold beef, and sent them to his friend, helping himself to the same quantity with mathematical exactness. Then, with plain bread, and gravity which might almost be called severe, they attacked it.

Lady Torquilin and I looked at each other reproachfully. This privation struck us as needless and extreme, and it had the uncomfortable moral effect of turning our own repast into a Bacchanalian revel. We frowned, we protested, we besought.

We suggested with insidious temptation that this was the last day of the races, and that nobody would know. We commended each particular dish in turn, in terms we thought most appetizing. It was very wrong, and it had the sting which drives wrongdoing most forcibly home to the conscience, of being entirely futile, besides engendering the severe glances of the respectable scout. The young gentlemen were as adamant, if adamant could blush. They would not be moved, and at every fresh appeal they concentrated their attention upon their cold beef in a manner which I thought most noble, if a trifle ferocious. At last they began to look a little stern and disapproving, and we stopped, conscious of having trenched disrespectfully upon an ideal of conduct. But over the final delicacy of Mr. Horton's lunch, the first of the season, Lady Torquilin regarded them wistfully. "Not even gooseberry tart?" said she. And I will not say that there was no regret in the courageous rejoinder: "Not even gooseberry tart.

I am not pretending to write about the things that ought to have impressed me most, but the things that did impress me most, and these were, at Mr. Sanders Horton's luncheon, the splendid old silver college goblets into which our host poured us lavish bumpers of claret cup, the moral support of the respectable scout, and the character and dignity an ideal of duty may possess, even in connection with cold beef. I came into severe contact with an idiom, too, which I shall always associate with that occasion. Lord Symonds did not belong to Pembroke College, and I asked him, after we had exchanged quite a good deal of polite conversation, which one he did belong to. "How lovely these old colleges are," I remarked, "and so nice and impressive and time stained. Which one do you attend, Lord Symonds?"

"Maudlin,” said Lord Symonds, apparently taking no notice of my question, and objecting to the preceding sentiment.

"Do you think so?" I said. I was not offended. I had made up my mind some time before never to be offended in England until I understood things. "I'm very sorry, but they do strike an American that way, you know."

Lord Symonds did not seem to grasp my meaning. "It is jolly old," said he. "Not so old as some of 'em. New, for instance. But I thought you asked my college. Maudlin, just this side of Maudlin bridge, you know."

"Oh!" I said. “And will you be kind enough to spell

your college, Lord Symonds? I am but a simple American, over here partly for the purpose of improving my mind."

"Certainly. M-a-g-d-a-l-e-n,'

M-a-g-d-a-l-e-n,'" returned Lord Symonds, very good-naturedly. "Now that you speak of it, it is rather a rum way of spelling it. Something like Cholmondeley.' Now, how would you spell Cholmondeley'?"

I was glad to have his attention diverted from my mistake, but the reputation of "Cholmondeley" is world-wide, and I spelled it triumphantly. I should like to confront an American spelling match with "Magdalen," though, and about eleven other valuable orthographical specimens that I am taking care of.

In due course we all started for the river, finding our way through quads even grayer and greener and quieter than Exeter, and finally turning into a pretty, wide, tree-bordered highway, much too well trodden to be a popular Lovers' Walk, but dustily pleasant and shaded withal. We were almost an hour too early for the races, as Mr. Horton and Lord Symonds wished to take us on the river before they were obliged to join their respective crews, and met hardly anybody except occasional strolling, loosegarmented undergraduates with very various ribbons on their round straw hats, which they took off with a kind of spasmodic gravity when they happened to know our friends. The treebordered walk ended more or less abruptly at a small stream, bordered on its hither side by a series of curious constructions reminding one of all sorts of things, from a Greek warship to a Methodist church in Dakota, and wonderfully painted. These, Mr. Horton explained, were the College barges, from which the race was viewed, and he led the way to the Exeter barge. There is a stairway to these barges, leading to the top, and Mr. Horton showed us up, to wait until he and Lord Symonds got out the punt.

The word "punting" was familiar to me, signifying an aquatic pursuit popular in England, but I had never even seen a punt, and was very curious about it. I cannot say, however, that the English punt, when our friends brought it round, struck me as a beautiful object. Doubtless it had points of excellence, even of grace, as compared with other punts-I do not wish to disparage it—but I suffered from the lack of a standard to admire it by. It seemed to me an uninteresting vessel, and I did not like the way it was cut off at the ends. The mode of propulsion, too, by which Mr. Horton and Lord Symonds got us around the river-poking a stick into the mud