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A SEVERE HUMILIATION.
129
concerts, &c., and purchased maps and guide-hooks
besides.
After having performed such exploits, and boasted
of them considerably to my fellow-passengers all the
way from Trondhjem to Hammerfest, my disgust and
humiliation were most intense 011 finding that the three
Oxonians had taken deck passage at one-third the fare
I was paying: they rolled themselves hardily and
bravely under the tarpaulins, and slept among trunks,
baskets, and barrels—and Lapps and Norwegians. To
be looked down upon by my fellow-countrymen as an
effeminate, lounging aristocrat, an inhabitant of sofas,
a sensual sitter upon stuffed cushions, while there were
hard planks within reach, was more than I could
patiently bear. I, who banter every friend whom I can
catch in the fact of riding in a first-class railway
carriage, upon the folly of paying three shillings per hour
for the hire of a cushion, to be utterly outdone in such
a matter by men from Oxford, where I had hitherto
believed none were to be found with sufficient
muscular energy to pronounce the letter "r" without
drawling it into "aw!" This was the severest blow my
pride could have possibly received. It was a source
of great consolation, however, to find that the Oxonians
did not like their deck passage: they looked very
uncomfortable, and went ashore at Bodö, under pretence
of ascending a mountain 011 the Swedish frontier; but,
as I firmly believe, really to wait for the next packet
and take saloon passage and claret without our
knowing it.
K
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