I passed the closing days of the summer term of 1908 very pleasantly at Oxford, receiving many kindnesses from old friends, mingled with expressions of regret that my official connection with the university was approaching its close. I recall an interesting dinner-party at Black Hall, the Morrells' delightful old house in St. Giles's, where my neighbour was Miss Rhoda Broughton, at that time resident near Oxford. We talked, of course, of her novels; and the pleasant-faced, grey-haired lady was amused to hear that my sisters were not allowed to read _Cometh Up as a Flower_, and _Red as a Rose is She_[1] (considered strong literary food in the early 'seventies), until they "came out." Mrs. Temple, the archbishop's widow, was also a fellow-guest: she had taken a house in Oxford, close to "dear Keble"; but said that the noise and uproar emanating at night from the college of "low living and high thinking" was so great that she thought she would have to move. A member of the lately-established {114} Faculty, or Institute, of Forestry, who was of our party, told us some "things not generally known" about trees, which I noted down. The biggest tree known in the world was, he said, not in America (what a relief!), but the great chestnut at the foot of Mount Etna, called the Chestnut of a Hundred Horses, with a trunk over 200 ft. round, and a hole through it through which two carriages can drive abreast. The biggest orange-tree known was, said our oracle, in Terre Bonne, Louisiana: 50 ft. high, 15 ft. round at base, and yielding 10,000 oranges annually. Finally, the most valuable tree in existence was the plane-tree in Wood Street, in the City, occupying a space worth, if rented, £300 a year--a capital value of £9,000 or thereabouts. All these facts I thought curious. Term over, I stayed for a little time with a sister in Kensington Gore, very handy for Kensington Gardens, where I sat an hour or two every morning enjoying the fresh air and verdure of that most charming of "London's lungs," and surrounded by frolicking children, including my small nephew. One of his little playfellows, a grandson of Lord Portman, suddenly disappeared from the gay scene; I inquired where he was, and was told that he had gone for a rest-cure. "Great heavens!" I said, "a child of three!--but why, and where?"--"Oh," was the reply, "Master Portman was taking too much notice of the busses and motor-cars and such-like, and wouldn't go to sleep; so he is taking a rest-cure in his nursery at the top of the house, looking over the chimney-pots!" The modern child! but then I do not of course profess to understand infants and their ways and needs. {115}