The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII. MR. VERDANT GREEN'S MORNING REFLECTIONS ARE NOT SO PLEASANT AS HIS EVENING DIVERSIONS.' Mr. Smalls' room was filled with smoke and noise. Supper had been cleared away; the glasses were now sparkling on the board, and the wine was ruby bright. The table, moreover, was supplied with spirituous liquors and mixtures of all descriptions, together with many varieties of " cup," ? a cup which not only cheers, but occasionally inebriates; and this miscellany of liquids was how being drunk on the premises by some score and a half of gentlemen, who were sitting round the table, and standing or lounging about in various parts of the room. Heading the table, sat the host, loosely attired in a neat dressing-gown of crimson and blue, in an attitude which allowed him to swing his legs easily, if not gracefully, over the arm of his chair, and to converse cheerfully with Charles Larkyns, who was leaning over the chair- back. Visible to the naked eye, on Mr. Smalls' lefthand, appeared the white tie and full evening dress which decorated the person of Mr. Verdant Green. A great consumption of tobacco was going on, not only through the medium of cigars, but also of meerschaums, short " dhudheens" of envied colour, and the genuine yard of clay; and Verdant, while he was scarcely aware of what he was doing, found himself, to his great amazement, with a real cigar in his mouth, which he was industriously sucking, and with great difficulty keeping alight. Our hero felt that the unexpected exigencies of the case demanded from him some sacrifice; while he consoled himself by the reflection, that, on the homoeopathic principle of " likescure likes," a cigar was the best preventive against any ill effects arising from the combination of the thirty gentlemen who were generating ...