We rather dreaded the invitations that sometimes reached us to a formal breakfast, or worse still, a _soirée_ (familiarly known as a “stand-up”), at the residence of some high authority. I have spoken of the Churton breakfasts in King’s; still more serious an affair was it to be one of a dozen undergraduates summoned _en bloc_ to breakfast at Trinity Lodge, for Dr. Thompson, the Master of Trinity, was a great University magnate, widely famed and feared for his sententious sayings and biting sarcasms, many of which were reported from mouth to mouth. We had heard of that deadly verdict of his on a University sermon preached by Dean Howson, joint author of Conybeare and Howson’s _Life of St. Paul_: “I was thinking what a very clever man Mr. Conybeare must have been.” As a member once or twice of such a breakfast-party, I recollect how awkwardly we stood herded together when we had entered the sage’s presence, and how, as we passed into the breakfast-room, we almost jostled each other in our anxiety to get a seat as far as possible away from that end of the long table where the Master in his majesty sat. As for the _soirées_ at Trinity Lodge and elsewhere, they demanded some strength of limb; for the number of visitors exceeded the number of seats, and to stand for two hours in a corner, and look as if one liked it, was irksome even for youth. At these ceremonials, when the Provost of King’s was the host, he used to invite undergraduates with immense condescension to “be seated”; and when he added with emphasis: “You may sit down _here_,” he was understood to be reflecting on the superior comfort of a Provost’s entertainment as compared with that of Trinity Lodge. One thing that rather galled the feelings of undergraduates was that none but Provost and Fellows might set foot on the extensive lawns at King’s--a selfish privilege of the few, as it appeared, maintained to the exclusion of the many. However that may have been, there came a night when a small party of Kingsmen committed the sacrilegious act of releasing a mole in front of the Provost’s Lodge, and dauntlessly awaited the result, thus anticipating Lord Milner’s policy of “damning the consequences.” There were no serious consequences, except to the most innocent of all the persons concerned--the mole. We watched him with admiration as he sank into that soft green turf, like a seal into water; and the next morning we were thrilled to see a small line of earthen hillocks on the sacred sward. Then followed a great to-do of gardeners and mole-catchers; and on the third day, to our regret and remorse, the poor mole paid the penalty for the trespasses of others. We put a London newspaper on the track of this incident, and the editor published some humorous speculations, for the benefit of readers interested in natural history, as to how the mole could have found his way to that cloistered spot.