The happiest thing about all this is that it affords the freest possible interplay of social forces. As soon as a newcomer gains distinction, as he does at once if he has the capacity, he is noticed by the leading men of the college, and is thus in a way to be taken into the life of the university. From the college breakfast it is only a step to the Gridiron, from the college eight to Vincent's, and from the debating society to the Chatham or the Canning. These, like all undergraduate clubs, are in yearly need of new members, and the older men in college are only too glad to urge the just claims of the younger for good-fellowship sake, and for the general credit of their institution. Even when a fellow has received all the university has to offer, he is still amenable to the duality of Oxford life. In American institutions, in proportion as a man is happily clubbed, he is by the very nature of the social organization withdrawn from his college mates; but at Oxford he still dines in Hall, holds forth at the college debating society, plays on the college teams, and, until his final year, he lives within the college walls. First, last, and always his general life is bound up with that of the college. The prominent men thus become a medium by which every undergraduate is brought in touch with the life of the university. The news of the athletic world is reported at Vincent's over afternoon tea; and at dinner time the men who have discussed it there relate it to their mates in the halls of a dozen colleges. A celebrated debater brings the news of the Union or of the smaller clubs; and whatever a man's affiliations in the university, he can scarcely help bringing the report of them back with him. In an incredibly short time all undergraduate news, and the judgments upon it of those best qualified to judge, ramify the college; and men who seldom stir beyond its walls are brought closely in touch with the innermost spirit of the university life. Here, again, those forbidding walls make possible a freedom of social interplay which is unknown in America. The real union of Oxford, social, athletic, and intellectual, is quite apart from the so-called Oxford Union; it results from the nice adjustment between the general residential life of the colleges and the specialized activities of the university.