There is little business connected with College athletics. The expenses of field and pavilion and barge and boats are met from subscriptions to the ‘amalgamated clubs’—to which nearly every College man belongs. The expenditure of a team is slight. The College provides the field. Every man furnishes his own ‘togs’, of which a different sort are required for nearly every sport. The clubs furnish boats and balls, and the few requisites which must be common property. Only to ’Varsity matches (and not to all of them) is admission charged. Almost no one watches a College match, for the simple reason that every one who is not playing on the field is engaged somewhere else at some other game. There is no ‘rooting’. A few scattered cheers break out at times, but there is no organized ‘encouragement’. One feature of Oxford athletics which is in striking antithesis to American College athletics is, that here, the more prominent and successful an athlete becomes, the greater his expenses, as he buys his own outfits, his own ‘blazers’, often pays his own railroad fares, usually incurs numerous social obligations, and receives no ‘compensation’ further than a row of shining prizes which may adorn his mantle-shelf. From the river and fields the men come in at about 4.30 for tea. Years ago a German traveller wrote in his diary, ‘To the Englishman tea is as necessary as to the German his beer.’ The customs have not changed. In this respect as in others ‘Oxford is nothing if not the reflection of English life’. As a social institution the tea-hour, with rest and ‘something to eat’ and lively conversation ‘after the game’, is thoroughly enjoyable; while as a practical institution it is a necessity, as dinner is two and a half hours away and the inner man needs immediate fortifying after the vigorous exercise of the past two hours. The hard-working man, then, has a chance to get in two hours of reading between tea-time and dinner. [Sidenote: Evening.] After the bells have struck seven the students stream, in gown and bare-headed, toward their College halls. At this one time during the day the students of each College really gather in a body. In the semi-gloom of the long hall, with its high ceiling and panelled, portrait-hung walls, with fireplaces glowing and electric lights illumining white cloths and bright silver, the tables are arranged in long rows, with flanking of narrow, backless benches on each side. Students file in; dons and Master enter, in evening dress, their loose gowns flowing back from their shoulders as they stride to ‘high table’. After the reading of a _Benedictus benedicat_ all sit down and fall-to right merrily. The dinner hour can hardly be styled a social hour—in hall; in fact, so business-like does it become at certain undergraduate tables that it might well appear to the casual observer——but, as a matter of fact, casual observers are not allowed entrance.