[Charles O’Malley, The Irish Dragoon Volume 2 (of 2) by Charles Lever]@TWC D-Link bookCharles O’Malley, The Irish Dragoon Volume 2 (of 2) CHAPTER XXXVIII 11/11
Our fellows behaved like trumps; and to do them justice, so did the enemy.
But unfortunately, notwithstanding this, and the plausible paragraphs of the morning papers, I have been summoned before the board for Tuesday next. Meanwhile I employ myself in throwing off a shower of small squibs for the journals, so that if the board deal not mercifully with me, I may meet with sympathy from the public.
I have just despatched a little editorial bit for the "Times," calling, in terms of parental tenderness, upon the University to say-- "How long will the extraordinary excesses of a learned funct be suffered to disgrace college? Is Doctor -- -- to be permitted to exhibit an example of more riotous insubordination than would be endured in an undergraduate? More on this subject hereafter." "'Saunders' News-letter.'-- Dr.Barret appeared at the head police-office, before Alderman Darley, to make oath that neither he nor Catty were concerned in the late outrage upon the pump." etc., etc. Paragraphs like these are flying about in every provincial paper of the empire.
People shake their heads when they speak of the University, and respectable females rather cross over by King William and the Bank than pass near its precincts. Tuesday Evening. Would you believe it, they've expelled me! Address your next letter as usual, for they haven't got rid of me yet. Yours, F.W. "So I shall find him in his old quarters," thought I, "and evidently not much altered since we parted." It was not without a feeling of (I trust pardonable) pride that I thought over my own career in the interval.
My three years of campaigning life had given me some insight into the world, and some knowledge of myself, and conferred upon me a boon, of which I know not the equal,--that, while yet young, and upon the very threshold of life, I should have tasted the enthusiastic pleasures of a soldier's fortune, and braved the dangers and difficulties of a campaign at a time when, under other auspices, I might have wasted my years in unprofitable idleness or careless dissipation..
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