United States or Fiji ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Nor did he suffer it to discourage him, or weaken his endeavours. His life soon began to flow once more in its usual, even, and quiet course. It did not take him long to discover that it was possible to live happily without the Clerkland, and he wondered in himself at the intensity of the desire to obtain it, which he had suffered to overpower him.
Then he heard another don, who was following him, call out "I say, do you know that the Clerkland is out?" "Is it?" said Mr Grayson, with unusual show of interest. "Yes. Who do you think has got it?" "A Saint Werner's man, I hope." "Yes." "Well, who is it?" What was the answer Owen or Home? at that distance the names sounded exactly alike.
Lillyston and De Vayne, unrestrained by such motives, did all they could to take him from his books, and amuse him by turning his attention to other subjects; but with such strong reasons for exertion, and so much depending on success or failure, the Clerkland scholarship continued ever the prominent subject of Julian's thoughts. At last the long looked for week arrived.
In his bitterness of soul he half determined to abandon all further attempt to gain the Clerkland, and dwelt, with galling recurrence, on the anguish of defeated aims. But the sound of the clock striking the hour of examination started him into sudden effort, and almost mechanically he seized his cap and gown, and went out without food and unrefreshed.
"I shouldn't wonder now if Home were to lose the Clerkland; he was sure of it before this morning," said one. "What a cursed shame!" echoed another. "I never in my life heard a more blackguard trick. That fellow Brogten has lost the Hartonians the scholarship; lucky if he hasn't lost it to Saint Werner's too. Perhaps that Benedict man will get it."
Full twenty minutes had been occupied by his futile and frantic efforts, and for a few moments longer he sat still in a stupor of grief and rage. Meanwhile, several of the other competitors for the Clerkland had noticed his absence in the senate-house, and Owen and Kennedy kept directing anxious glances to the door, and dreading that he was ill.
"Good heavens, what can be the matter?" and without waiting to hear more, he darted to Julian's door, and called his name. "What do you want?" said Julian in a fretful and angry voice. "Why are you sported? And why aren't you in for the Clerkland?" "Can't you see, then?" "What!
Shaking off examination reminiscences, he proposed to De Vayne, Kennedy, and Lillyston a bathe in the Iscam, and then a long run across the country. They started at once, laughing and talking incessantly on every subject, except the Clerkland, which was tabooed.
In composition, and in all the lighter and more graceful requirements of a classical examination, Julian had an undoubted superiority, but Owen was his equal, if not his master, in the power of unravelling intricacies and understanding logic; and, besides this, Owen was a better mathematician, and, although classics had considerable preponderance, yet one mathematical paper always formed part of the Clerkland examination.
I have much to be ashamed of." "Well, Julian," said Lillyston, changing the subject, "you mustn't think any more of this Clerkland, for potentially you got it, as everybody acknowledges; dynamei you were successful, if not ezgo." "I don't mean to let it discourage me," said Julian, "though the potential is mightily different from the actual."
Word Of The Day