If the subject
of the question changes color 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. Strange, but true. And so it has
happened to me and to every person, often and often, to be hit in rapid
succession by these twinned facts or thoughts, as if they were linked
like chain-shot.
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