Long Vacation Amusements

Summary

“Judicious drank.”

—Pope.

I had set to work in earnest to read for both Triposes. With my Classical tutor I attacked the Œdipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, an author into whose difficulties I was just beginning to have a little insight, and also wrote Composition, not in his rooms like an examination, but leisurely at home, as well as translations of the most difficult passages in the Third Book of Thucydides. With my other coach I began Mathematics from the beginning-that is to say from Algebra. It was a melancholy reflection that I had first been set to work on the mystery of x and y eight years before. During that space of time my advance in literature and general mental development had been definite and appreciable; in Mathematics I seemed to have been standing still. This was the fourth time I had begun Algebra, and essayed with no weakness of purpose to get it up properly. But it was as slow and disagreeable work as ever, and one day after I had been blundering along for a fortnight without getting into Trigonometry, I suddenly resolved to give up the idea of going out in Honors, for that year at any rate. Being a bye-term man I could choose the year below without formally degrading, and this would put me on an equality with other men by giving me a second chance for a Scholarship.