I shall go over after
lunch. But it needn't interfere with your work. You can go
on with the "Anabasis" till I come back. And remember -
NEANISKOS is not a proper name, ha! ha! ha! The quadratics
will keep till the evening.' He was merry over his
prospects, and I was not altogether otherwise.
But there was no Xenophon, no algebra, that day! Dire was
the distress of my poor dominie when he found the mother as
much bewildered as the daughter was frightened, by the
mistake. 'She,' the daughter, 'had never for a moment
imagined, &c., &c.'
My tutor was not long disheartened by such caprices - so he
deemed them, as Miss Jemima's (she had a prettier name, you
may be sure), and I did my best (it cost me little now) to
encourage his fondest hopes. I proposed that we should drink
the health of the future mistress of Warham in tea, which he
cheerfully acceded to, all the more readily, that it gave him
an opportunity to vent one of his old college jokes. 'Yes,
yes,' said he, with a laugh, 'there's nothing like tea. TE
VENIENTE DIE, TE DECEDENTE CANEBAM.' Such sallies of
innocent playfulness often smoothed his path in life. He
took a genuine pleasure in his own jokes. Some men do. One
day I dropped a pot of marmalade on a new carpet, and should
certainly have been reprimanded for carelessness, had it not
occurred to him to exclaim: 'JAM SATIS TERRIS!' and then
laugh immoderately at his wit.
That there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of
it, was a maxim he acted upon, if he never heard it. Within a
month of the above incident he proposed to another lady upon
the sole grounds that, when playing a game of chess, an
exchange of pieces being contemplated, she innocently, but
incautiously, observed, 'If you take me, I will take you.'
He referred the matter next day to my ripe judgment. As I
had no partiality for the lady in question, I strongly
advised him to accept so obvious a challenge, and go down on
his knees to her at once. I laid stress on the knees, as the
accepted form of declaration, both in novels and on the
stage.
In this case the beloved object, who was not embarrassed by
excess of amiability, promptly desired him, when he urged his
suit, 'not to make a fool of himself.'
My tutor's peculiarities, however, were not confined to his
endeavours to meet with a lady rectoress. He sometimes
surprised his hearers with the originality of his abstruse
theories. One morning he called me into the stable yard to
join in consultation with his gardener as to the advisability
of killing a pig. There were two, and it was not easy to
decide which was the fitter for the butcher.
