God Almighty could break the bank every afternoon.
_Apre's?_ as we say in France. Do you pretend to omniscience?"
"Not exactly."
"Well, but prescience of isolated events, preceded by no _indicia,_
belongs only to omniscience. Did they not teach you that much at Oxford?"
"They taught me very little at Oxford."
"Fault of the place, eh? You taught _them_ something, though; and the
present conversation reminds me of it. In your second term, when every
other man is still quizzed and kept down as a freshman, you, were already
a leader; a chief of misrule. You founded a whist-club in Trinity, the
primmest college of all. The Dons rooted you out in college; but you did
not succumb; you fulfilled the saying of Sydney Smith, that 'Cribbage
should be played in caverns, and sixpenny-whist in the howling
wilderness.' Ha! ha! how well I remember riding across Bullington Green
one fine afternoon, and finding four Oxford hacks haltered in a row, and
the four undergraduates that had hired them on long tick, sitting
cross-legged under the hedge like Turks or tailors, round a rude table
with the legs sawed down to stumps. You had two packs, and a portable
inkstand, and were so hard at it that I put my mare's nose right over the
quartet before you saw either her or me.
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