Now, gentlemen, you know perfectly well the toast I am going to
propose, and you know equally well that in thus glancing first
towards our friends of the white stripes, I merely anticipate and
respond to the instinctive courtesy of Oxford towards our brothers
from a distance--a courtesy extending, I hope, and I do not doubt,
to any imaginable limits except allowing them to take the first
place in last Friday's match, if they could by any human and
honourable means be kept in the second. I will not avail myself of
the opportunity provided for me by the absence of the greater part
of the Oxford crew--indeed, of all but one, and that, its most
modest and devoted member--I will not avail myself of the golden
opportunity considerately provided for me to say a great deal in
honour of the Oxford crew. I know that the gentleman who attends
here attends under unusual anxieties and difficulties, and that if
he were less in earnest his filial affection could not possibly
allow him to be here.
It is therefore enough for me, gentlemen, and enough for you, that
I should say here, and now, that we all unite with one accord in
regarding the Oxford crew as the pride and flower of England--and
that we should consider it very weak indeed to set anything short
of England's very best in opposition to or competition with
America; though it certainly must be confessed--I am bound in
common justice and honour to admit it--it must be confessed in
disparagement of the Oxford men, as I heard a discontented
gentleman remark--last Friday night, about ten o'clock, when he was
baiting a very small horse in the Strand--he was one of eleven with
pipes in a chaise cart--I say it must be admitted in disparagement
of the Oxford men on the authority of this gentleman, that they
have won so often that they could afford to lose a little now, and
that "they ought to do it, but they won't.
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