Chapter I: Introduction

It is over twenty years since "Peter Binney" was first published in England, and I should be unwilling to offer it to my American readers at this time of day without some plea for leniency towards a young man's book, which contains perhaps more than the average number of crudities to be found in such beginnings. A few of the crudities I have been able to soften, but if you begin tampering with early work in the light of maturer knowledge, you are very apt to rub off the bloom that attaches to it just because it is early work, written with spirit and freshness, though with little skill. So I have left "Peter Binney" much as it was, with most of its imperfections on its head, and I trust some compensating merits.

One merit I know it to possess. It presents a picture of the lighter side of undergraduate life as it was in Oxford and Cambridge, and as it still exists, in spite of superficial changes; and that is something that can only be done by a young man, whose memories are still fresh, and to whom that life is still important enough to make it the basis of a story.

New York, July, 1921

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I Mr. Binney Makes Up His Mind
II Mr. Binney Interviews One Tutor, and Engages Another
III Lucius Wins a Year's Respite
IV No Help To Be Gained from Mrs. Higginbotham
V Mr. Binney Arrives in Cambridge
VI Lord Blathgowrie Has Something to Say
VII Mr. Binney Speaks at the Union And Makes a Distinguished Acquaintance
VIII The Newnham Girl
IX Mr. Binney Gives a Dinner and Receives a Rebuff
X "The New Court Chronicle"
XI "Put Him in the Fountain"
XII Lucius Makes One Discovery and Mrs. Toller Another
XIII Mr. Binney Gets into Trouble
XIV Nemesis
XV Lucius Finds a Backwater
XVI Third Trinity Makes a Bump
XVII Mr. Binney Drinks the Health of a "Blue"