Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A CAPITAL IDEA. 35 CHAPTER IV. BEEP SCHEMES, AND A QUEER LECTURER. My object in dropping the few hints that had so stung the prince to the quick, was less to pick a quarrel than to cause him momentary annoyance. A quarrel, however, had ensued, and I was not sorry for it; the less so that the turn which the dispute had taken toward the end had suggested to me a capital idea. It was quite customary in our college for one pupil to call out another, in presence of a professor, to a trial of skill in some kind of composition, either prose or verse; and the stake was generally a certain number of what were termed points of diligence, which were nothing else than large commas inscribed under the respective name of each pupil, and having a convenient value, representing the amount of industry and diligence displayed by him ia the various daily tasks. At the end of the year, the pupils possessed of the highest number of these points were entitled to certain prizes. The guardian of the important volume, in which they were registered upon an order of the professor, was held in high honor, and was called the decurion. These trials of skill were much encouraged by the professors, as a means of promoting useful emulation, and were termed in our scholastic language challenges. So I determined to challenge the prince iu poetry; and already I was so impatient for the next afternoon's lecture, that I could hardly get to sleep for thinking of it. Alfred came to me next morning rubbing his hands. " Do yon kn, ', ', Lorenzo, that what you said last night about thestolen sonnet has made quite a commotion among onr fellows? They have got hold of the volume of Frugoni; it is all just as you said: the prince's sonnet is a barefaced plagiarism, merely copied, and Frederic, who ought by r...