Although he kept clear, for the most part, of his fellow-students, choosing his friends charily and shyly, I could yet see that he had no objection to contemplate from a distance the humours and festivities of his more high-spirited companions.

He was not one of those impulsive fellows who shut their eyes and take a header into the midst of a new good-fellowship, only to discover too late their error, and repent their rashness at leisure.
No, Tom had his eyes open.

He saw the evil as well as the good, and, alas for him, having seen it, he looked still! The students of Saint Elizabeth's Hospital were not on the whole a bad set.

On Tom's arrival in London, however, he had the firm impression in his mind that all medical students were bad characters, and this foolish notion did him much harm.

If two or three of them were to go off for a spree, his imagination would at once picture them in scenes and places such as no respectable man would like to frequent, whereas, if the truth were known, these misjudged young men had committed no greater crime than that of taking a boat up the river, or a drive in a dog-cart.