But, more important than all these busy idlenesses of Oxford life, I began to find myself at this time as a public speaker. Juliet Savage had early joined all the clubs she could hear of: I never knew a woman who had such a passion for the exchange of opinions. It was through her instigation that I joined, besides several College Clubs, the Curzon, the Dynamiters, and the _x_+1’s. (Of course I belonged to the Union: at the time of which I am writing, anybody of British parentage could get in without even paying an entrance fee.) The Curzon was a very select Tory club, founded a short while earlier owing to a schism in the Canning: a bare majority, who contrived, however, to keep the club funds and the Lygon Cup, refusing admission to my indignant sex. It was full of time-honoured institutions, such as taking a pinch of snuff before you began your speech (which always made me cough rather), and singing “Down among the Dead Men” in chorus before we broke up—never did we do this so lustily as one evening when the “senseless, woman-hating crew” of the original Canning were meeting on the same staircase (in Univ., I think it was), and had to be given the full benefit of our opinions. The Dynamiters had one custom which was, I suppose, unique. At each meeting, one of the members was chosen by lot to murder the Vice-Chancellor, and had to report at the next meeting on the attempt made and the reasons for its failure. Apart from this, it was simply a home of rather _démodé_ revolutionary talk, with a foreign element in it so strong that I once introduced a motion to have French talked at the debates. It proved, however, that our German comrades had not enough of the international spirit to tolerate the proposal. The _x_+1’s were, I must admit, a more interesting Society. There was no reason whatever for their being so called. They debated literary questions mostly, not without acumen, but with a rather painful striving after originality. Thus, one member would try to resuscitate the dead laurels of Tennyson; another would condemn Masefield as a mawkish sentimentalist, another would write in disproof of the existence of Dr. Johnson. The most characteristic note of the Society was its repudiation of all the courtesies of debate. The President always opened the proceedings by saying that it was his unpleasant duty to allow Mr. So-and-so to read his paper, on the hackneyed subject of So-and-so; he could only hope that it would be as brief as possible. When the paper was ended, the Secretary would rise, and remonstrate with the honourable member for having read so uninterestingly, and would proceed to move a vote of censure on him, which was solemnly carried. In speaking, if you referred to anyone who had addressed the House before you, you were bound to mention him by reference to some physical defect, or unpleasant personal characteristic, as “the honourable member who forgot to shave this