The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green | Page 6

that was to take him to
Parnassus. It was a great sight to see her sitting stiff and straight, - with
her wonderfully undeceptive "false front" of (somebody else's) black
hair, graced on either side by four sausage-looking curls, - as, with
spectacles on nose and dictionary in hand, she instructed her nephew in
those ingenuous arts which should soften his manners, and not permit
him to be brutal. And, when they together entered upon the romantic

page of Virgil (which was the extent of her classical reading), nothing
would delight her more than to declaim their sonorous
Arma-virumque-cano lines, where the intrinsic qualities of the verse
surpassed the quantities that she gave to them.
Fain would Miss Virginia have made Virgil the end and aim of an
educational existence, and so have kept her pupil entirely under her
own care; but, alas! she knew nothing further; she had no acquaintance
with Greek, and she had never flirted with Euclid; and the rector
persuaded Mr. Green that these were indispensable to a boy's education.
So, when Mr. Verdant Green was (in stable language) "rising" sixteen,
he went thrice a week to the Rectory, where Mr. Larkyns bestowed
upon him a couple of hours, and taught him to conjugate {tupto}, and
get over the ~Pons Asinorum~. Mr. Larkyns found his pupil not a
particularly brilliant scholar, but he was a plodding one; and though he
learned slowly, yet the little he did learn was learned well.
Thus the Rectory and the home studies went hand and hand, and
continued so, with but little interruption, for more than two years; and
Mr. Verdant Green had for some time assumed the ~toga virilis~ of
stick-up collars and swallow-tail coats, that so effectually cut us off
from the age of innocence; and the small family festival that annually
celebrated his birthday had just been held for the eighteenth time, when
"A change came o'er the spirit of ~his~ dream."
[14 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]
CHAPTER II
MR. VERDANT GREEN IS TO BE AN OXFORD-MAN
ONE day when the family at the Manor Green had assembled for
luncheon, the rector was announced. He came in and joined them,
saying,with his usual friendly ~bonhomie~, "A very well-timed visit, I
think! Your bell rang out its summons as I came up the avenue. Mrs.
Green, I've gone through the formality of looking over the accounts of
your clothing-club, and, as usual, I find them correctness itself; and

here is my subscription for the next year. Miss Green, I hope that you
have not forgotten the lesson in logic that Tommy Jones gave you
yesterday afternoon?"
"Oh, what was that?" cried her two sisters; who took it in turns with her
to go for a short time in every day to the village-school which their
father and the rector had established: "Pray tell us, Mr. Larkyns! Mary
has said nothing about it." "Then," replied the rector, "I am tongue-tied,
until I have my fair friend's permission to reveal how the teacher was
taught."
Mary shook her sunny ringlets, and laughingly gave him the required
permission.
"You must know, then," said Mr. Larkyns, "that Miss Mary was giving
one of those delightful object-lessons, wherein she blends so much
instructive-"
"I'll trouble you for the butter, Mr. Larkyns," interrupted Mary, rather
maliciously.
The rector was grey-headed, and a privileged friend. "My dear," he said,
"I was just giving it you. However, the object-lesson was going on; the
subject being ~Quadrupeds~, which Miss Mary very properly
explained to be 'things with four legs.' Presently, she said to her class,
'Tell me the names of some quadrupeds?' when Tommy Jones,
thrusting out his hand with the full conviction that he was making an
important suggestion, exclaimed, 'Chairs and tables!' That was turning
the tables upon Miss Mary with a vengeance!"
During luncheon the conversation glided into a favourite theme with
Mrs. Green and Miss Virginia - Verdant's studies: when Mr. Larkyns,
after some good-natured praise of his diligence, said, "By the way,
Green, he's now quite old enough, and prepared enough for
matriculation: and I suppose you are thinking of it."
Mr. Green was thinking of no such thing. He had never been at college
himself, and had never heard of his father having been there; and

having the old-fashioned,
what-was-good-enough-for-my-father-is-good-enough-for-me sort of
feel-
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 15]
ing, it had never occurred to him that his son should be brought up
otherwise than he himself had been. The setting-out of Charles Larkyns
for college, two years before, had suggested no other thought to Mr.
Green's mind, than that a university was the natural sequence of a
public school; and since Verdant had not been through the career of the
one, he deemed him to be exempt from the other.
The motherly ears of