icking in fish. But to those whom he
liked, and who looked up to him (for this was an essential condition),
he was kind, hospitable, courteous, and even playful. His humour, which
was of a crabbed kind quite peculiar to himself, found its best vent in
his sermons. I often wondered whether he realized that the extreme
grotesqueness of his preaching was the spell which drew undergraduates
to the Sunday evening service at St. Mary's.

For my next reminiscence of hospitality to Freshmen I must rely on the
assistance of a pseudonym. At the time of which I am writing, Oxford
numbered among her Professors one who had graduated, at a rather
advanced age, from Magdalen Hall. Borrowing a name from Dickens, we will
call him "Professor Dingo, of European reputation." To the kindness of
Professor and Mrs. Dingo I was commended by a friend who lived near my
home in Bedfordshire, and soon after my arrival in Oxford they asked me
to Sunday luncheon at their villa in The Parks. The conversation turned
on a new book of Limericks (or "Nonsense Rhymes," as we called them
then) about the various Colleges. The Professor had not seen it, and
wanted to know if it was amusing. In my virginal innocence I replied
that one rhyme had amused me. "Let's have it," quoth the Professor, so
off I went at score--

"There once was at Magdalen Hall
A Man who knew nothing at all;
When he took his degree
He was past fifty-three--
Which is youngish for Magdalen Hall."

The Professor snarled like an angry dog, and said, witheringly, that, if
_that_ was a specimen, the book must be sorry stuff indeed. After
luncheon I walked away with another undergraduate, rather senior to
myself, who said rejoicingly, "You've made a good start. That rhyme is
meant to describe old Dingo."

FOOTNOTES:

[13] "The Life of Faith and the Athanasian Creed." University Sermons.
Series II.

[14] The Rev. C. M. Davies, D.D.

[15] University Sermons. Series II.

[16] "He had gained University honours, such as have been gained by no
one now living, and will probably never be won again.... He was one of
the greatest mathematical geniuses of the century. His chief and highest
intellectual interests lay in an unknown world into which not more than
two or three persons could follow. In that world he travelled
alone."--_From a Memorial Sermon by B. Jowett._

V

OXONIANA

"Mind'st thou the bells? What a place it was for bells, l