For my next reminiscence of hospitality to Freshmen I must rely on the assistance of a pseudonym. At the time of which I am writing, Oxford numbered among her Professors one who had graduated, at a rather advanced age, from Magdalen Hall. Borrowing a name from Dickens, we will call him "Professor Dingo, of European reputation." To the kindness of Professor and Mrs. Dingo I was commended by a friend who lived near my home in Bedfordshire, and soon after my arrival in Oxford they asked me to Sunday luncheon at their villa in The Parks. The conversation turned on a new book of Limericks (or "Nonsense Rhymes," as we called them then) about the various Colleges. The Professor had not seen it, and wanted to know if it was amusing. In my virginal innocence I replied that one rhyme had amused me. "Let's have it," quoth the Professor, so off I went at score-- "There once was at Magdalen Hall A Man who knew nothing at all; When he took his degree He was past fifty-three-- Which is youngish for Magdalen Hall." The Professor snarled like an angry dog, and said, witheringly, that, if _that_ was a specimen, the book must be sorry stuff indeed. After luncheon I walked away with another undergraduate, rather senior to myself, who said rejoicingly, "You've made a good start. That rhyme is meant to describe old Dingo." FOOTNOTES: [13] "The Life of Faith and the Athanasian Creed." University Sermons. Series II. [14] The Rev. C. M. Davies, D.D. [15] University Sermons. Series II. [16] "He had gained University honours, such as have been gained by no one now living, and will probably never be won again.... He was one of the greatest mathematical geniuses of the century. His chief and highest intellectual interests lay in an unknown world into which not more than two or three persons could follow. In that world he travelled alone."--_From a Memorial Sermon by B. Jowett._ V OXONIANA "Mind'st thou the bells? What a place it was for bells, lad! Spires as sharp as thrushes' bills to pierce the sky with song. How it shook the heart of one, the swaying and the swinging, How it set the blood a-tramp and all the brains a-singing, Aye, and what a world of thought the calmer chimes came bringing, Telling praises every hour To His majesty and power, Telling prayers with punctual service, summers, centuries, how long? The beads upon our rosary of immemorial song." _The Minstrelsy of Isis_. Oxford is a subject from which one cannot easily tear oneself: so I make no apology for returning to it. In that delightful book, "The Minstrelsy of Isis," I have found an anonymous poem beginning "Royal heart, loyal heart, comrade that I loved,"