The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, page 139 by Cuthbert Bede
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of fisticuffs! And if, when there was a cry "To arms!" we could always settle the dispute in an English fashion with those arms with which we have been supplied by nature, there would then, perhaps, be fewer weeping widows and desolate orphans in the world than there are just at present.
On the evening of the fifth of November, then, Mr. Bouncer's rooms were occupied by a wine-party; and, among the gentlemen assembled, we noticed (as newspaper reporters say) Mr. Verdant Green, Mr. Charles Larkyns, Mr. Fosbrooke, Mr. Smalls, and Mr. Blades. The table was liberally supplied with wine; and a "dessert at eighteen-pence per head" - as Mr. Bouncer would afterwards be informed through the medium of his confectioner's bill; - and, while an animated conversation was being held on the expected Town and Gown, the party were fortifying themselves for the ~emeute~ by a rapid consumption of the liquids before them. Our hero, and some of the younger ones of the party, who had not yet left off their juvenile likings, were hard at work at the dessert in that delightful, disregardless-of-dyspepsia manner, in which boys so love to indulge, even when they have, passed into University ~men~. As usual, the ~bouquet~ of the wine was somewhat interfered with by those narcotic odours, which, to a smoker, are as the gales of Araby the Blest.
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 137]
Mr. Blades was conspicuous among the party, not only from his dimensions - or, as he phrased it, from "his breadth of beam," - but also from his free-and-easy costume. "To get himself into wind," as he alleged, Mr. Blades had just been knocking the wind out of the Honourable Flexible Shanks (youngest son of the Earl of Buttonhole), a Tuft from Christ Church, who had left his luxurious rooms in the Canterbury Quad chiefly for the purpose of preparing himself for the forthcoming Town and Gown, by putting on the gloves with his boating friend. The bout having terminated by Mr. Flexible Shanks having been sent backwards into a tray of wine-glasses with