I want to hear the porters cry, “Change here for Ennerdale!” And I must be forgiven, since so few know the poem, for quoting the postscript to his parody of Browning, sufficient surely to make the poet, for whom Jim Stephen had an immense reverence, turn in his grave in order to laugh more easily. As follows: P.S. There’s a Me Society down at Cambridge Where my works, _cum notis variorum_ Are talked about: well, I require the same bridge As Euclid took toll at as _Asinorum_. And as they have got through several ditties I thought were as stiff as a brick-built wall I’ve composed the above, and a stiff one it is, A bridge to stop asses at, once for all. If the art of parody can go further, I do not know who has conducted it there. The kindly ghost of Robert Browning might perhaps shrug his shoulders at “The Cock and the Bull,” and say, “Very amusing”: but reading Jim Stephen’s R.B. he must surely have winced and frowned first, and thereafter broken into a roar of his most genial laughter. Often (when not indebted to C.S.C.) Jim Stephen’s most apt and biting parodies would be written or spouted extempore: I remember for instance someone reading a rather lamentable verse from F. W. Myers in which he delicately alludes to the godly procreation of children in the following lines: Lo! when a man magnanimous and tender, Lo! when a woman desperate and true, Make the irrevocable sweet surrender, Show to each other what the Lord can do. upon which Jim Stephen without a moment’s pause exclaimed: Lo! when a man obscene and superstitious, Lo! when a woman brainless and absurd, Strive to idealize the meretricious, Love one another like a beast or bird. This could not be included in _Lapsus Calami_, nor unfortunately would he include one of his most ingenious extravagances, and I cannot find that it has ever been published. The subject matter was that a burglar “desperate and true” awoke in the night and found an angel standing in his room, who asked him whether, being what he was, he would sooner go to heaven or hell, the choice being entirely his. His admirably logical conclusion was as follows: The burning at first no doubt would be worst, But custom that anguish would soften; But those who are bored by praising the Lord, Would be more so by praising him often. He chooses accordingly. All that year Jim remained in residence at Cambridge; during one vacation he stayed with us at Addington, during another I went over to his Irish home, where, one evening after an argument about Kipling, he took up his bedroom candle saying, “Well, I wish he would stop kipling. Good night.” In ten minutes he came back, “I’ve written a poem about it,” he said, and proceeded to read the two immortal stanzas which end, When the Rudyards cease from kipling, And the Haggards ride no more.