She had prided herself on a rigorous abstention from "poaching"; she fancied that men were very ready to accuse women of not "playing the game" and had been resolved to give no color to such an accusation.

Now and then a demonstration against an unpopular professor, a "bolt," i.e. abstention en masse from a recitation; or a rarer invasion of the town and hostile demonstration gave us a fillip, but the doctor had so well policed the college and so completely brought under his moral influence the town, that no serious row ever took place in my time.

It is a characteristic ordinance, and one which emphasises the vivid Muslim apprehension of the part played by abstention in their religious code.

This almost general abstention of electors, compared with the eagerness of former times, is but the avowal of the error to which your masquerade has given rise.