It puzzles you to
think, what an avalanche of talent will fall upon the country at the
graduation of those Seniors!
You will find however that the country bears such inundations of college
talent with a remarkable degree of equanimity. It is quite wonderful how
all the Burkes, and Scotts, and Peels, among college Seniors, do quietly
disappear, as a man gets on in life.
As for any degree of fellowship with such giants, it is an honor hardly
to be thought of. But you have a classmate--I will call him Dalton--who
is very intimate with a dashing Senior; they room near each other
outside the college. You quite envy Dalton, and you come to know him
well. He says that you are not a "green-one,"--that you have "cut your
eye-teeth"; in return for which complimentary opinions you entertain a
strong friendship for Dalton.
He is a "fast" fellow, as the Senior calls him; and it is a proud thing
to happen at their rooms occasionally, and to match yourself for an hour
or two (with the windows darkened) against a Senior at "old sledge." It
is quite "the thing," as Dalton says, to meet a Senior familiarly in the
street. Sometimes you go, after Dalton has taught you "the ropes," to
have a cosy sit-down over oysters and champagne,--to which the Senior
lends himself with the pleasantest condescension in the world.
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