"The guard touched his cap and went. I said something, I don't know what; I was
a little embarrassed.
"'You will write to me, Oscar, won't you, and tell me about everything?'
"'Oh, yes,' I replied, 'as soon as I get settled down, you know. There will
be such a lot to do at first, and I am wild to see everything. I wonder how
the professors will treat me. I do hope they will not be fools or prigs;
what a pity it is that all professors are not poets. . . . .' And so I went
on merrily, when suddenly the whistle sounded and a moment afterwards the train
began to move.
"'You must go now,' I said to him.
"'Yes,' he replied, in a queer muffled voice, while standing with his hand on
the door of the carriage. Suddenly he turned to me and cried:
"'Oh, Oscar,' and before I knew what he was doing he had caught my face in his
hot hands, and kissed me on the lips. The next moment he had slipped out of the
door and was gone. . . . .
"I sat there all shaken. Suddenly I became aware of cold, sticky drops
trickling down my face--his tears. They affected me strangely. As I wiped them
off I said to myself in amaze:
"'This is love: this is what he meant--love.' . . . .
"I was trembling all over. For a long while I sat, unable to think, all shaken
with wonder and remorse."
CHAPTER III--TRINITY, DUBLIN: MAGDALEN, OXFORD
Oscar Wilde did well at school, but he did still better at college, where the
competition was more severe. He entered Trinity on October 19th, 1871, just
three days after his seventeenth birthday. Sir Edward Sullivan writes me that
when Oscar matriculated at Trinity he was already "a thoroughly good classical
scholar of a brilliant type," and he goes on to give an invaluable snap-shot
of him at this time; a likeness, in fact, the chief features of which grew more
and more characteristic as the years went on.
"He had rooms in College at the north side of one of the older squares, known
as Botany Bay. These rooms were exceedingly grimy and ill-kept. He never
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