Bransby's academy on the afternoon of
the day in which I myself had eloped. But in a brief period I ceased
to think upon the subject, my attention being all absorbed in a
contemplated departure for Oxford. Thither I soon went, the
uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and
annual establishment which would enable me to indulge at will in the
luxury already so dear to my hear--to vie in profuseness of
expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms in
Great Britain.
Excited by such appliances to vice, my constitutional temperament
broke forth with redoubled ardor, and I spurned even the common
restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it were
absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that
among spendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a
multitude of novel follies, I added no brief appendix to the long
catalogue of vices then usual in the most dissolute university of
Europe.
It could hardly be credited, however, that I had even here, so utterly
fallen from the gentlemanly estate as to seek acquaintance with the
vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept
in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of
increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the
weak-minded among my fellow-collegians.
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