The object of their meeting was to cast lots to see who should go and milk the goat. The lot fell on the promoter of the plot. He borrowed a large jug from one of our servants, and crept upon his face and hands from the forecastle to the poop, where the goat was fastened. As we were lying down within a few feet of the goat, the old pilot cut the cord with which it was tied, and quietly dragged it amidships, where he commenced to milk the animal. The goat and the pilot had a tough battle between them. No one was to interfere, and if the pilot did not succeed he was to pay a dollar for the failure. He could get no milk, so he paid the fine and proposed to cast lots again. This time the lot fell on the Turk, who was a passenger on board, bound for Archico. When he approached, the enraged creature stood upon its hind legs and struck the milkman a fearful blow with his powerful horns between the shoulders, throwing him into the bilgehole, breaking his ribs as well as our only earthern jug in pieces. The poor Turk cried out murder and mercy, but the rascals who were the real cause of the mishap only laughed at his misery. We pulled him on deck, and made him as comfortable as we could under the circumstances. I did not ask the cause of the accident, as I was fully under the impression that he fell into the hole whilst walking on the deck in the dark. Next morning the goat became the greatest object of curiosity on board. Every one among the native passengers and crew came and looked at it, laughed, and ran away. The whole cause of the laughs and accident was that the governor's servants sent us a half-wild Billy instead of a domestic Nanny.

Eight days after our departure from Cosier we found that we had run 769 miles from Suez, at the rate of four miles per hour.

Two days before our arrival at Massowah a funny but almost fatal accident occurred, in which a playful porpoise took the most prominent part. About noon, when sailing between the islands of Noora and Dalac, we met a large shoal of porpoises, which turned back and accompanied us for several hours. They played like children around our little barque, jumping over one another. With the exception of the dolphin, there is no fish in the sea so playful as the porpoise. Not having molested them, they grew so bold as to approach within two feet of our vessel; in fact, many of them jumped much higher out

of the water than we were above it. By this time we had prepared our spears and spear ropes; some went aft, whilst others went to the forecastle. In less than ten minutes we brought six large ones on deck. They were very powerful in the water, but quite helpless out of it. The spearsman must be very cautious how he coils his rope where he stands, and how he throws the spear. Often, when he thinks he has caught his fish, he finds himself twenty feet under water, with his legs entangled in his spearrope, and completely at the mercy of his game unless it is in shallow water. On this occasion, a passenger was one of those who was provided with a spear. He said he never threw a spear or lance in his life, yet he was too proud to be instructed in the art. The foolish fellow was well punished for his pride. When we were in the act of hauling our sixth fish on deck, we heard a cry of "Man overboard." On looking round we all missed the passenger, who, it appeared, had speared a large porpoise, and got his legs entangled in the rope of the spear, and was drawn overboard. We were then sailing close to the shore, in about six feet of water. When the porpoise was struck, it went at once to the bottom, but returned to the surface in less than half a minute, accompanied by the spearman, who fortunately got released from the coils of his own rope. If the water had been deep he would undoubtedly have been drowned, which, according to his after-career in life, would have been no great loss to humanity. We cast our anchor in the port of Massowah on our twenty-second day from Suez.

Massowah is a small town built of wood

and grass, with the exception of two or three houses owned by the Government officials, and stands on an island about 250 yards from the shore, and it has a mixed population of Arabs, Turks, Abyssinians, Jews, and Christians. The island is about threequarters of a mile long, and half a mile broad, but without wood or water. It is the greatest slave-market on the shores of Abyssinia, from which the Mohammedans of Hodidah, Mocco, Gunfoodah, Jiddah, and Mecca are supplied with slaves.

Several Abyssinian Christians and Shangallah converts were publicly sold in my own presence in the public streets of Massowah. To my astonishment I found that there was a national treaty between the British Government and his Imperial Ma

jesty the Sultan of Turkey, whereby the latter obtained the sanction of the British Government to import slaves from the shores of Abyssinia for the use of the inhabitants of the holy cities of Yemen. This treaty was signed by the Governor of Aden and the Pasha who commanded the district of Jiddah.

A CASE AGAINST ALMA MATER.

To the Editor of "ONCE A WEEK."

boat race and the senior wranglership-I place them in the order which public interest assigns them, both within and without the Universities-have some dim and undefined ideas, gathered from rumour, of the existence of some giant abuses at the Universities, notably of the monstrous system of credit which prevails there, and of the reckless expenditure which it fosters among the undergraduates; but few who have not themselves been sufferers from them have any conception of the extent of these abuses,

service of late in exposing shams and swindles, and in calling public attention to grievances which have been allowed to acquire, from immemorial custom, the character of almost prescriptive rights, that I cannot doubt your readiness and willingness to make generally known a grievance which has long been, and while it exists will continue to be, the source of much trouble, and vexation, and sorrow to hundreds of British fathers though I would have it distinctly understood that it is the sons as well as the fathers that I have in view in calling attention to the abuses which constitute my case against the Universities.

In bringing grave charges against the social economy of these venerable institutions, I feel that I am undertaking a very delicate and unpleasant task. I am in the position of a son bringing an accusation against his own mother an unnatural proceeding which will seem to sensitive minds but one step removed in horror from the crime of parricide. I find, however, some consolation in the thought that, so far as I am concerned, Alma Mater proved herself to be a stepmother rather than a mother, and cannot, therefore, expect to be regarded with more natural affection than usually falls to the share of that stony relative.

With this apology and excuse for my apparent ingratitude, let me proceed to state my case against Alma Mater, premising that everything herein related has been derived from my own experience, and that I must be understood as confining myself to the University to which I had, and have still, the honour to belong. Similar evils exist, I am aware, in the sister University; but it is possible that they may proceed from a slightly different though equally faulty system.

Even outsiders, whose knowledge of University matters is principally confined to the

from them.

It is generally understood that a University education is an expensive luxury, and people take it for granted that there are good and sufficient reasons for its costliness, without any wish, apparently, to inquire whether it ought to be costly. That it ought not to be so is becoming generally admitted; that it need not be so, I hope to show in this paper. Englishmen have such a blind reverence for facts that they are slow to question the right of any fact to existence, or to believe that a fact is not necessarily a truth. Anything which has established itself as a fact has acquired, to English minds, a moral dignity which renders it sacred, no matter how false or iniquitous the foundation on which it is built. And so, John Bull is of opinion that because University education is costly, therefore it ought to be costly; and he settles the difficulty by saying, in his off-hand, Podsnapian way, that people who can't afford to pay the price musn't send their sons there-that is all.

But then there are a good many persons who have, by much trouble and the exercise of considerable economy and self-denial, scraped together a sum which they think will amply suffice to gain their sons a University education. They have carefully counted the cost; they have grounded their calculations upon the best possible data they could obtain; and it seems clear to them that they can provide for all the necessary expenses. In eight cases out of ten they are deceived and disappointed: the expenses turn out to be terribly heavier than they had calculated; and in the end, after disbursing something like twice as much as they had laid by, they find, to their consternation, that their sons are up to their eyes in debt, of which, till that moment, they never knew the existence. Fathers are so apt to be reticent on these matters

and such reticence is only natural, after allthat I am sure it is not generally known how much misery and trouble are caused to both parents and sons by the debts contracted during a University career.

The father impoverished, obliged to retrench his household and make every member of the family suffer, and the son hampered by debts his father cannot or will not pay, dragged down in his efforts to win his way to position by this millstone round his neck-both are ashamed to allude to these painful matters, because both take it for granted that the result is due solely to the son's folly and recklessness, and that the blame, therefore, rests solely on his shoulders. Now, it is that erroneous opinion that I wish here to combat. I maintain that the cause of these results is not to be looked for in the individual folly of the undergraduate, but in the system which permits, if it does not encourage, extravagance for which I can really find no milder epithet than reckless. I am not speaking of those wild young prodigals whom no restraints in the world can check in their wanton and idiotic wastefulness. I am speaking of the bulk of the young men. who pass through the University - those who lie between the two extremes: who are neither very good nor very bad, neither very wise nor very foolish. How is it that, with hardly an exception, they incur debts which more or less injure their parents, and more or less hamper themselves in beginning life? I believe the true answer to be that Alma Mater-professing, as she does, to stand in loco parentis to all her students -not only scandalously fails to do her duty by them, but actually helps them to become victims to extravagance; not troubling herself to take the commonest precautions to keep boys fresh from school, for the first time their own masters, utterly inexperienced in the ways of the world, from becoming the prey of a whole swarm of greedy and rapacious harpies, whom experience has made adepts in the art of pigeonplucking.

And that brings us to the consideration of the provisions which are ostensibly made by the University as guardian of the welfare and morals of the two thousand young men who are placed under her care. The college tutor is the embodiment of Alma Mater's parental care. He is invested, pro tem., with the duties and responsibilities of

a father; and Paterfamilias, after a pleasant interview with him, goes away with the idea that his son is in safe hands-likely, indeed, to be far better looked after than he would be at home; because it is the special duty of the tutor to exercise a supervision which the father, with other demands upon his time, would find impossible.

The functions of the college tutor are probably misunderstood by outsiders, owing to the erroneous impression conveyed by the term "tutor." In this case it is used in its strictly literal and legal meaning of a guardian. The college tutor takes no part in the instruction of his pupils-or wards, as I should rather call them-unless he should happen to be one of the college lecturers. The college itself, in its corporate capacity, provides for the instruction of the undergraduate, and takes that department out of the tutor's hands. The tutor's business is solely to watch over the welfare of his wards, to help them by his advice and experience, and be, in short, their guide, philosopher, and friend. He is, as a rule, a man of high standing in the college; his moral character is always unimpeachable; and he is generally a thorough gentleman, of an age that makes him not too old to be a friend, and not too young to be a mentor. I have no word to say against the character of college tutors as individuals. But when I look at the weighty charge entrusted to them, I cannot but say that they do not properly fulfil the duties which devolve upon them. Let me give an instance in proof of this assertion. My own tutor had no less than 160 men "on his side," as it is termed a tolerably large family for one father to look after. He received £18 a year for his nominal guardianship of each of these wards; thus making out of them an income of nearly £3,000 a year. It was his custom to invite his pupils, in batches of twenty at a time, to a formal breakfast once a year. Each pupil, on his arrival at the commencement of a term, paid him a complimentary and formal visit; and at the close of each term another formal visit, to obtain the necessary permission to "go down." During the interval, providing the pupil observed college rules-attended lectures, chapel, and hall a certain number of times in the week, and was in his rooms every night before the stroke of midnight-he might neither see nor hear anything of his tutor, unless it suited him to call. What I wish to make

clear is that it is entirely optional on the part of the pupil to take advantage of the counsel and guidance of his tutor; and when a man has 160 pupils to look after, how is it possible that he can keep watch over the mental, bodily, and moral welfare of each? How is it possible for him to be on such intimate terms with each pupil as to stand in the place of a father to him? The relationship between them must be a cold and formal one; and the tutor can have no means of ascertaining what sort of a private life his pupil is leading. This is the great defect in the tutorial system in large colleges. In the very small colleges, where the tutor has not more than forty or fifty men at the most to look after, he can, of course, cultivate much closer relations with his pupils. But as more than half of the total number of students at my own University is contained in two large colleges, where the system is as I have described it, I think I cannot be fairly said to have misrepresented the facts, or to have called attention only to an unimportant section of the University system.

As the Universities are at present constituted, it is far safer for a father to send his son to a small college than to a large one; for at the former he will at least have the benefit of real tutorial supervision. In all respects I consider small colleges preferable to large ones, and better qualified to carry out the great idea of our University system. On that point, however, I cannot dwell here; but I am convinced that in the matter of tutorial supervision the large colleges must be more assimilated to the small ones before the tutors can really and honestly fulfil their true functions. No tutor should be allowed to have more than fifty pupils, at the outside; and the tutors need not be made to suffer by this arrangement, for there can be little doubt that Paterfamilias will not grudge paying £36 instead of £18 to ensure a thorough and conscientious guardianship, which will probably save him some hundreds by curtailing his son's extravagance.

The tutorial system, as it at present exists at the Universities, is a sham. Fond fathers and mothers at home are deluded into the idea that their sons are not only under strict supervision, but that they have the advantage of constant advice and help from a man qualified by experience to guide them, who combines in pleasant harmony the relations of a father and a friend; whereas, in fact,

young Hopeful is left to his own resources, and, so long as he keeps within the formal college rules, may drift into what extravagance or folly he pleases.

So much for culpable neglect on the part of Alma Mater; but I have a worse charge against her yet, and it is that of deliberately encouraging the extravagant expenditure which she ought to repress.

It is hardly possible, I think, to look impartially at University institutions without being struck with the thought that they are all painfully suggestive of a deliberate design to make money out of the undergraduate. After all, if we examine her closely, Alma Mater is only a Mrs. Squeers in a higher walk of life, and the University little more than a Dotheboys Hall on a grand scale. It is a venerable and respectable system of fleecing. College and town alike seem to recognize but one grand purpose in inviting the youth of England to their ancient seat of learning-to make as much money out of them as they possibly can, and by any means they can. Looking back upon Alma Mater now, with eyes opened pretty wide by experience, I can see written over shop and college alike the motto

"Rem facias; si possis recte; si non
Quousque modo rem."

And the result is unquestionably a success from their point of view.

There probably never was any instrument more ingeniously contrived for obtaining money under plausible but wholly incomprehensible pretences than a college bill. It would puzzle the oldest don in the college to explain all the items. As for poor Paterfamilias, he scratches his head, and looks distracted over them, as well he may. Young Hopeful, appealed to, supposes "it's all right. They keep up the old names for things, you know. Looks queer and quaint; but all right." This is hardly satisfactory; and perhaps Paterfamilias ventures mildly to ask the tutor for an explanation. He is politely informed that they are the usual college payments, and with this delightfully vague assurance he has to remain content. Paterfamilias has such a profound respect for the venerable foundations of the University, that he would be horrified at the bare idea of instituting an inquiry to ascertain what is the origin of this black-mail, and what possible justification or excuse the college authorities can have for levying it

in this arbitrary fashion. If he attempted to do anything of the sort, he would have all don-dom down upon him at once, and would be crushed beneath a load of accumulated precedents. For probably even the most honest and conscientious don believes that immemorial custom has conferred a prescriptive right which overrules all objections on the score of original and intrinsic injustice and extortion.

It would seem, perhaps, to an outsider that the college, with its large revenues, might at least endeavour to supply the undergraduate with all necessary articles of food at moderate prices, and thus prevent him from resorting to tradesmen outside, whose charges are as exorbitant as their wares are generally inferior. But such a course has never commended itself to the college authorities, and consequently the prices charged by the college for provisions are to the full as exorbitant as those charged by the tradesmen outside-in some cases, even more so. To take dinners, for example. At my own college we paid just a trifle under two shillings-the exact amount, I think, was IS. 10 d. for a dinner which any ordinary eating-house would have supplied for eighteenpence. Fish, soup, and cheese were extras, which we could have by "sizing" for them-i.e., paying kitchen prices. The most trifling relish was an extra, to be paid for accordingly. We were indeed supplied with "swipes" to wash down our plain joint and sweets; but this modest beverage was so abominably bad that we had invariably to "size" for college ale at twopence a glass, the price we should have paid for much better ale at one of Spiers and Pond's refreshment bars. It is hardly wonderful that a third of the undergraduates at the colleges at least dined at hotels in the town, having to pay for their dinner in hall whether they dined or not. Now, I don't mean to say that plain joints and sweets are not good enough for young lads of eighteen, but I do mean to say that the charge made for that frugal meal is excessive. The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple can afford to supply its students-of whom I suppose there do not dine daily one-fourth of the number of undergraduates who dine in the hall of my own college with an excellent dinner, consisting of soup, fish, joints, sweets, cheese, beer, and wine, for the sum of two shillings a head. The mess of the Artillery cadets 2. Woolwich supplies a still

better dinner-not including wine, however— to 100 members at the rate of one shilling and sixpence a head. Soyer, the famous French cook, offered to contract with my own college to supply a better dinner than they now have for one shilling and fourpence a head; but the offer was refused, and the consequence is our head cook makes his £2,000 or £3,000 a year, and keeps his carriage and pair. The same exorbitant prices are charged for everything which the undergraduate has from the kitchens and butteries; though I am bound to say that the college, by a curious inconsistency, interferes to protect the undergraduate from his own rapacity by limiting the number and amount of his orders from the college kitchens, thus again driving him out among the tradesmen, who take their turn at fleecing him. I ask why undergraduates should be taxed so monstrously to fill the pockets of college parasites? Every college official, from the porter to the master, has his perquisites, in addition to a liberal salary which removes the least shadow of excuse for such perquisites. One ridiculous charge was—and unless lately abolished, is still-the charge of a halfpenny upon every letter delivered in college. In my time this was the perquisite of the head porter, who died during my residence, and left a fortune of nearly £15,000. Since then this black-mail is no longer a perquisite of the porter, who receives a fixed salary of £250 a year in lieu of these pickings. If the college chooses to take the delivery of the letters out of the hands of the regular postmen, I should like to know what right it has, therefore, to levy a fine of 50 per cent. upon every letter which an undergraduate receives.

Another most unreasonable impost is the fine for being out after ten o'clock at night. Every undergraduate who comes into college after ten is fined one penny, and after eleven, twopence. Yet by the rules of the college every student is permitted to be out till twelve. He is therefore committing no fault in being out after ten or eleven. Then why fine him? There is no question of discipline involved. Then why exact a fine for doing what the college openly countenances? It is the luckless Paterfamilias who has to pay all these fines, for they are not deducted from the undergraduate's pocket money, as they ought to be if they are intended as a punishment; and it certainly is hard that poor Paterfamilias should