~266~~
The veil of night was more than half drawn, ere the youthful inmates of
the Mitre retired to rest; and many of the party were compelled to put
up with sorry accommodation, such was the influx of ~267~~gownsmen who,
shut out of lodging and college, had sought this refuge to wait the
approaching morn;--a morn big with the fate of many a scholastic
woe--of lectures and reprovals from tutors, and fines and impositions
and denunciations from principals, of proctorial reports to the
vice-chancellor, and examinations before the _big wigs_, and sentences
of expulsion 268~~and rustication: coming evils which, by anticipation,
kept many a man awake upon his pillow, spite of the perilous fatigue
which weighed so heavy upon the exhausted frame. The freshman had little
to fear: he could plead his ignorance of college rules, or escape notice
altogether, from not having yet domiciled within the walls of a college.
Although I had little to expect from the apprehension of any of these
troubles, as my person was, from my short residence, most likely unknown
to any of the authorities--yet did Morpheus refuse his soporific
balsam to the mind--I could not help thinking of my young and giddy
companions, of the kind-hearted Eglantine, immured within the walls of
a dungeon; of the noble-spirited Echo, maltreated and disfigured by the
temporary loss of an eye; of the facetious Bob Transit, so bruised and
exhausted, that a long illness might be expected; and, lastly, of our
Eton sextile, the incomparable exquisite Lionise, who, if discovered in
his dangerous frolic, would, perhaps, have to leap out of a first floor
window at the risk of his neck, sustain an action for damages, and his
expulsion from college at the same time.
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