And
the more I reflect on the matter the more I am convinced that it is
the sleeping in the ivy that does it. How different it is from
student life as I remember it!
When I was a student at the University of Toronto thirty years ago,
I lived,--from start to finish,--in seventeen different boarding
houses. As far as I am aware these houses have not, or not yet,
been marked with tablets. But they are still to be found in the
vicinity of McCaul and Darcy, and St. Patrick Streets. Any one who
doubts the truth of what I have to say may go and look at them.
I was not alone in the nomadic life that I led. There were hundreds
of us drifting about in this fashion from one melancholy habitation
to another. We lived as a rule two or three in a house, sometimes
alone. We dined in the basement. We always had beef, done up in
some way after it was dead, and there were always soda biscuits on
the table. They used to have a brand of soda biscuits in those days
in the Toronto boarding houses that I have not seen since. They
were better than dog biscuits but with not so much snap. My
contemporaries will all remember them. A great many of the leading
barristers and professional men of Toronto were fed on them.
In the life we led we had practically no opportunities for association
on a large scale, no common rooms, no reading rooms, nothing. We
never saw the magazines,--personally I didn't even know the names
of them.
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