At the end of the holidays I was to go to Mr. W. E. Jelf, near Barmouth, to be coached for a few months before going to Oxford. At that time the railway went no further than Shrewsbury, where I lodged at the sign of the “Raven,” an old-fashioned country inn of great repute—such an inn as Charles Dickens would have loved, and as he alone could have described. As I sat at dinner I saw that there was one other guest in the coffee-room. While the waiter was out of the room this gentleman came up to me and said, “Sir, I beg your pardon for interrupting you, but you can render me a great service.” I thought of Buckstone in “Lend me Five Shillings,” and instinctively froze, but I thawed again when he went on to say, “I am Professor Anderson, the Wizard of the North; I am going to give an exhibition of conjuring to-night, and for two of my most telling tricks I need an accomplice. Will you help me? I need hardly say that you will have a free admission.” I suppose that he thought that I was a “youth of an ingenuous countenance and ingenuous modesty,” and should not arouse suspicion. I consented, and he entrusted me with a marked coin and some other trifle, giving me full instructions as to what I was to do. We adjourned after dinner; the room was crowded and the Professor made a great success of his show. And so it came about that my first appearance in public was as “bonnet” to the Wizard of the North. I saw no more of my friend, for the next day I was coaching in Pickwickian fashion on the box seat through Wales to Dolgelly, where my tutor’s carriage met me and finally landed me at his pretty place, Caerdeon, where he had bought himself a small estate and built a charming house. The Rev. William Edward Jelf was a man of no little renown in the Oxford world. He had been senior Censor of Christ Church, a great disciplinarian both in college as tutor, and outside as proctor. He was a very sound scholar, and the translator of Raphael Kühner’s Greek Grammar, a monumental work. One of his greatest friends was Scott, the master of Balliol, to whom he was wont to assign quite the lion’s share of the credit for the great dictionary—Liddell and Scott. As a Don, Jelf was anything but popular—he was too uncompromising, too “stiff in opinions.” At the same time he was justice itself, and if you obeyed the law—his law—to the right or to the left of which there was no salvation, there was no limit to what he would do for you. I had been warned of his “stiffness,” and made up my mind to observe discipline, with the result that we got on famously, and the months spent with him were, if rather lonely, on the whole happy and very profitable, for he certainly was a most inspiring teacher.