If old, it observes stated periods, and
you might as well attempt to regulate the time of highwater to suit a
fishing-party as to change these periods. The crucial experiment is this.
Offer a bulky and boggy bun to the suspected individual just ten minutes
before dinner. If this is eagerly accepted and devoured, the fact of
youth is established. If the subject of the question starts back and
expresses surprise and incredulity, as if you could not possibly be in
earnest, the fact of maturity is no less clear.
--Excuse me,--I return to my story of the Commons-table.--Young fellows
being always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meagre fare of the
evening meal, it was a trick of some of the Boys to impale a slice of
meat upon a fork, at dinner-time, and stick the fork holding it beneath
the table, so that they could get it at tea-time. The dragons that
guarded this table of the Hesperides found out the trick at last, and
kept a sharp look-out for missing forks;--they knew where to find one,
if it was not in its place.--Now the odd thing was, that, after waiting
so many years to hear of this college trick, I should hear it mentioned a
second time within the same twenty-four hours by a college youth of the
present generation.
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