But that plan had not always answered. Sometimes, though rarely, cases
occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or more
vicious than usual, resolutely refused to budge, and so far carried
their point as to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a
corner of the general room. Yet, if an Indian screen could be found
ample enough to plant them out from the very eyes of the high table, or
_dais_, it then became possible to assume as a fiction of law that
the three delf fellows, after all, were not present. They could be
ignored by the porcelain men, under the maxim that objects not
appearing and objects not existing are governed by the same logical
construction. [Footnote: _De non apparentibus_, etc.]

Such being, at that time, the usage of mail-coaches, what was to be
done by us of young Oxford? We, the most aristocratic of people, who
were addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even upon
the insides themselves as often very questionable characters--were we,
by voluntarily going outside, to court indignities? If our dress and
bearing sheltered us generally from the suspicion of being "raff" (the
name at that period for "snobs" [Footnote: "_Snobs_," and its
antithesis, "_nobs_," arose among the internal factions of shoemakers
perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed
much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and
effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the
public attention.]), we really _were_ such constructively by the place
we assumed. If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we
entered at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the analogy of
theatres was valid against us,--where no man can complain of the
annoyances incident to the pit or gallery, having his instant remedy in
paying the higher price of the boxes. But the soundness of this analogy
we disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be pretended that