and
a friend to a numerous company, and for which the mayor was good enough
to lend us the Town Hall.

From the incubus of mere collegiate discipline I was perhaps more free
than nine undergraduates out of ten. At the time when I matriculated
there were within the college precincts no quarters available; and I and
a fellow freshman who was in the same position as myself managed to
secure a suite of unusually commodious lodgings. That particular
partnership lasted only for a term, but subsequently I and two other
companions took the whole upper part of a large house between us. We
were never what is called "in college"; we rarely dined in Hall, having,
besides a good cook, a very good dining room of our own, where we gave
little dinners, much to our own contentment. We had, moreover, a spare
bedroom, in which on occasion we could put up a visitor. One visitor who
stayed with us for some weeks was Wentworth. Little things remain in the
mind when greater things are forgotten; and one little incident which I
remember of Wentworth's visit was this. Those were days when, for some
mysterious reason, men, when they smoked, were accustomed to wear
smoking caps. Wentworth had one of Oriental design, which he would
somehow attach to his head by means of a jeweled pin. One evening when
he was adjusting it the light caught his features at some peculiar
angle, and for a fugitive moment his face was an exact and living
reproduction of one of the best-known portraits of Byron.

Another incident belonging to this same order of memories occurred
during one of the race weeks. About half past ten one evening,
accompanied by three companions, I was making my way along a rather
ill-illuminated street. My three companions were feminine, and the
dresses of two of them--triumphs of the latest fashion--were calculated
to arrest attention as though they were so much undulating moonlight.
Suddenly I was aware that a strange voice was addressing me. It was the
voice of a proctor, who, attended by several "bulldogs," was asking me,
with a sinister though furtive glance at the ladies, what I was doing,
and why I was not in cap and gown. I could see in his eyes a sense of
having very neatly caught me in a full career of sin. I explained to him
that Mrs. L., wife of one of the greatest of the then university
magnates, and her two charming daughters had just been so kind as to
have had supper with me, and that I was seeing them back to All Souls'.