President Bloduplex was, as is usual, the son of his
father and mother, being born in very early life, at an uncertain
moment of a certain day or night, near Wheelabout.

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His talents were good; his acquirements respectable
especially in Classics, Antiquities, History, and Literature
in general;—still they were not uncommon. In Mathematics
and Sciences, we cannot state his attainments; and
simply because we never discovered them—yet he must
have got beyond arithmetic, since Clarence, in return for
aid in Greek, did gratefully assist the Doctor in Algebra.
Harwood, indeed, thought the President's attainments in
such matters inconsiderable; but then Harwood was Professor
of Mathematics and may have expected too much.
At all events the President set no great value on these matters,
making himself merry at Clarence's expense, on
accidentally discovering that this gentleman was studying
Mathematics under the guidance of his friend Harwood,
while Harwood read Latin and Greek with Clarence.

As a companion, no man could be more agreeable than
our President. It was this led our young Professors to
unbosom in his presence—and even when, in an unguarded
moment, the President remarked—“friendship is a word I
have blotted from my vocabulary!”—they thought he suspected
other men only and not themselves. But before
long it was found he had confidence in nobody; and that
he looked on all men as enemies, to be managed, resisted,
counteracted, circumvented. This was his proton pseudos,
to imagine all sorts of wickedness and chicanery in all
others; and then to combat all with such weapons as he
fancied they were using or would use against him! Hence
said Harwood once,—“depend on it, when Bloduplex
tells us of the meanness, and duplicity, and falsehood, and
machinations of Doctor Red and others in Wheelabout, towards
himself, he has used the same towards them.” But
Harwood was a young man, and may have been mistaken.

Doctor B. was an excellent preacher, and a still better
lecturer, whether is regarded the matter or the manner:

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and some of his pulpit exhibitions were surpassingly fine.
His theological opinions, like the Oxford Tracts, were for
the “Times:” his only decided opinion in theology being
that “there were worse men in hell than Judas Iscariot.”

Like King David, our President, but in a different sense,
had been “a man of war from his youth;” and in some
adroit way—(he attributed it partly to his elocution)—he
had usually worsted his enemies and even his friends, too,
in ecclesiastical combats before the clerical courts! Indeed,
so thoroughly had he devoured things as to have
“used himself up!” One demolished brother in the middle
east attributed the victory over himself to the “Doctor's
peculiar memory, which had no tenacity in things that
made against himself, but retained all and more too of such
as were in his own favor.” But that was the fault of his
Phrenological organization; and he only acted in obedience
to the laws of his nature.

My own opinion is, President B. owed most of his victories—
and some of his defeats—to his Wonderful Religious
Experience! which in the stereotyped crying places always
when first heard inclined weak believers to his
side! I well know the peril of meddling with this Experience;
since the Doctor soberly arraigned both Clarence
and Harwood for sniggering when they heard its third or
fourth repetition—although the Judges would not condemn
the accused, inasmuch as a moiety of said Judges did
snigger and sneer a little themselves when the Experience
was enacted for them!

Ay! the Player did sometimes so overdo this part as
not only to look excessively silly, but to see in other men's
faces that he had been making a special fool of himself!
“A donkey,”—says æsop—“boasting descent from a generous
race horse, failed, however, in a certain race; when,
humbled and ear-fallen, he had a shadowy recollection of
his father—an A S S.” A dim remembrance of that

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donkey's true progenitor, very respectfully named in more than
one solemn court and conclave, and as an accompaniment
to the Religious Experience, may enable our worthy Divine,
if he still live, to see one reason why, (if, he failed
not often to destroy his foes,) he has so completely destroyed
himself.

“Yes—but, by your own account, he did overthrow both
Clarence and Harwood.”

Reader—a double-cone seems to be rolling up hill, on
its inclined planes: and yet is it all the time really going
down hill! According to his threat, he did “trample both
Trustees and Faculty under his feet;”—but it has proved
to himself only a rolling up-hill downwards!

Some will think we are manufacturing a character: and,
maybe, crities will say it is a very poor one after all, and
that any second rate genius could have invented a much
better. Well, honesty is the best policy; and, although it
may affect the sale of the book one way or the other, we
must say that Bloduplex is really a fictitious character!