Our Maltese father brought a cheque from his island home; and subscriptions came from my Yucatan friend, Señor Ygnacio Peon, and from Alastair Fraser in remote Rhodesia. I went off on a campaign south of the Tweed, with my lantern slides as a passport; and it was never difficult, in lecturing on the straits and struggles of the Scottish Church in the early nineteenth century, to pass to the needs and hopes of the Scottish Benedictines in the early twentieth. I had, as always, a kind reception and a sympathetic hearing from our brethren at Douai Abbey, but had the bad luck to be invalided immediately afterwards, fortunately in the pleasant Surrey home of my sister, who took me drives, when I was convalescent, all among the queer-shaped hills of the North Downs, intersected by the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury. The national coal-strike began whilst I was at Nutwood--a million men "downing tools," and the end impossible to foresee. Travelling, of course, became at once infinitely troublesome and tedious;[10] however, I made my way to Stonyhurst College, where I had a big and interested audience (there were many young Scots among the 400 pupils), and then managed to crawl back to London (one simply {222} sat in a station, and waited for a train to come along some time), where I attended the "house-warming" dinner of our Caledonian Club--I was an original member--transferred from Charles Street to Lord Derby's fine house overlooking St. James's Square. There were, of course, self-congratulatory speeches; and a concert of Scottish music wound up the evening agreeably. I paid a flying visit to Oxford this week--a guest now in my old Hall, which had a full muster of monastic undergraduates. The most conspicuous object in Oxford seemed to be our "gracious tower" at Magdalen--a mass of elaborate scaffolding from top to bottom:[11] spring-cleaning, I imagined, for the Prince of Wales, who was going into residence there in October. I called on the new University chaplain, installed, but not yet, apparently, quite at home in, the old familiar house in St. Aldate's, and also managed to put in a few hours at the Bodleian, to finish my article on William of Wykeham, the last of eighty-three which I had written for the American Encyclopædia. It had been interesting work, of which some tangible results were certain vestments, pictures, and other adornments which I had been thus able to provide for the chapel of our Benedictine Hall.