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Updated: June 15, 2025
I will not say that the English are "a nation of shopkeepers;" but I do say that comparatively small matters occupy the thoughts of men in every country outside the routine of ordinary duties, and form the staple of ordinary conversation, among pedants, the difference between ac and et; among aristocrats, the investigation of pedigrees; in society, the comparative merits of horses, the movements of well-known persons, the speed of ocean steamers, boat-races, the dresses of ladies of fashion, football contests, the last novel, weddings, receptions, the trials of housekeepers, the claims of rival singers, the gestures and declamation of favorite play-actors, the platitudes of popular preachers, the rise and fall of stocks, murders in bar-rooms, robberies in stores, accidental fires in distant localities, these and other innumerable forms of gossip, collected by newspapers and retailed in drawing-rooms, which have no important bearing on human life or national welfare or immortal destiny.
The jousts, boat-races, and hunts which were held then and on the feasts of Pentecost and S. Orligo were so sumptuous that the provveditore limited the expenditure. The last boat for Trieste left Pirano at 1.30 p.m., an hour so ridiculously early, that we determined to walk to Isola and proceed thence by train.
There may be an observable coincidence, but young men usually prepare themselves to enter a particular college, and do not await the result of boat-races. But the fact remains that the true college hero of to-day is the victor in games and sports, not in studies; and it is not unnatural that it should be so.
Those who had been seasick recovered as soon as the motion of the ship ceased; and when everything aloft and on deck had been made snug, the crew were piped to dinner. In the afternoon, part of the students were permitted to go on shore; the band played, and several boat-races took place, very much to the delight of the people on shore, as well as those on board.
Then he slunk out, scarcely knowing whither he went, but mechanically taking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs of the colleges, until he cleared the university precincts, and got down to the banks of the Camisis river, now deserted, but so often alive with the boat-races, and the crowds of cheering gownsmen, he wandered on and on, until he found himself at some miles' distance from Oxbridge, or rather was found by some acquaintances leaving that city.
"All right," I said, "but Pat Singleton's escapades always amuse me. I'd like to hear about his making an apple-pie bed for that nurse." Daintree chuckled again, and I gathered from the expression of his face that the nurse had endured something worse than an apple-pie bed. "Or about the boat-races," I said. "I didn't know you had anything which floated on that lake of yours."
"I thank the Lord," says her husband piously, "that more work gets put on me than I can keep pace with. And well it is, when a man's wife takes to wagering and betting and pulling in low boat-races to the disgrace of her sex. Someone must keep the roof over our heads: but the end may come sooner than you expect," says he, and winds up with a tolerable imitation of a hacking cough.
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