In university circles I found a certain amount of uneasy trepidation owing to the official presence of Lord Curzon. A resident Chancellor was a phenomenon unprecedented for centuries, and one unprovided for in the traditional university ritual, in which the first place was naturally assigned to the Vice-chancellor. There was much talk as to when, and in what direction, the new broom would begin to sweep, and amusing stories (probably _ben trovati_) of dignified heads of houses being called over the coals at meetings of the Hebdomadal Council. Personally the Chancellor made himself very agreeable, entertaining everybody who was anybody at his fine old mansion, once the "town house" of the Dukes of Marlborough. It was all, perhaps, a little Vice-regal for us simple Oxonians, who were not accustomed to write our names in a big book when we made an afternoon call, or to be received by a secretary or other underling instead of by our host when we went out to luncheon or dinner. But it {103} was all rather novel and interesting; and in any case the little ripples caused on the surface of Oxford society by our Chancellor's sayings and doings soon subsided; for, as far as I remember, his term of residence did not exceed a month or so altogether. I was kept busy all this autumn term by the considerable work I had undertaken (the contribution of nearly eighty articles) for the American _Catholic Encyclopædia_. One of the longest was on Cambridge; and I felt on its completion that I knew much more about the "sister university" than about my own! Most of my work was done in the Bodleian Library; and it was a pleasant and welcome change to find oneself installed in the new, well-lighted and comfortable reading-room arranged in one of the long picture-galleries, instead of (as heretofore) in an obscure and inconvenient corner of Duke Humphrey's mediæval chamber. The then Bodley's Librarian was a bit of an oddity, and perhaps not an ideal holder of one of the most difficult and exacting offices in the university; but he was always kindness itself to me, and, whatever his preoccupations, was always ready to put at my service his unrivalled knowledge of books and their writers. His memory was stored with all kinds of whimsical rhymes: sometimes he would stop me in the street, and--at imminent peril of being run over, for he was extraordinarily short-sighted--would peer in my face through his big spectacles, and say, "Did you ever hear of ----the learned Archdeacon of York, Who _would_ eat his soup with a knife and a fork: A feat which he managed so neatly and cleverly, That they made him the Suffragan Bishop of Beverley!" {104} Or it would be, perhaps, "Listen to this new version of an old saw: Teach not your parent's mother to extract The embryo juices of an egg by suction: The aged lady can the feat enact Quite irrespective of your kind instruction."