But I fling them all down here for him to do what he
likes with, and turn to speak at more length of the University, or,
rather the University Church, which I would not have any reader of mine
fail to visit.
X
With my desire to find likeness rather than difference in strange
peoples, I was glad to have two of the students loitering in the _patio_
play just such a trick on a carter at the gate as school-boys might play
in our own land. While his back was turned they took his whip and hid it
and duly triumphed in his mystification and dismay. We did not wait for
the catastrophe, but by the politeness of another student found the
booth of the custodian, who showed us to the library. A noise of
recitation from the windows looking into the _patio_ followed us
up-stairs; but maturer students were reading at tables in the hushed
library, and at a large central table a circle of grave authorities of
some sort were smoking the air blue with their cigarettes. One, who
seemed chief among them, rose and bowed us into the freedom of the
place, and again rose and bowed when we went out. We did not stay long,
for a library is of the repellent interest of a wine-cellar; unless the
books or bottles are broached it is useless to linger.
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