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The Dean of St. Paul's had long wearied of his Oxford work. Eternal grinding at bad Greek, bad Latin, and bad logic, had become deeply wearisome to him. Most of the men of his time, too, had gone away, and the men he sat with in common were bright, clever, hearty enough; but they were too young for him. He was getting a Fogy among Dons.
Why, he had often put it to himself, should he stay there trying to live down the old Provost, who was not so very old, and become head of the house himself? It was a miserable life. Certainly, Norway, in the long vacation, freshened him up a little; but then he was the only man in the college who ever went to Norway. He could see that his salmon stories bored men at dessert, and, like a wise man, he left off telling them. And, indeed, for him, there was little left to talk about, save the everlasting pettinesses of hebdomadal board, or something which he hated still more.