Unluckily this easy way of learning things is like all aids to memory: more easily picked up than dropped again, when it has served its purpose. A friend of mine tells me that, out of all his Latin and Greek, the things that he remembers best are silly little rhymes that he was taught at school, “Common are to either sex, _Artifex_ and _Opifex_,” and other stuff like that. When I first went up to Cambridge, I confounded the Circle at Infinity with the Circular Points at Infinity till some one drew a circle for me and put two circular points in it like two eyes in a very fat face, and then added the Line at Infinity just where the mouth would come. And now I cannot go to Infinity without seeing this round face grinning at me as the Cheshire Cat grinned at Alice when she was in Wonderland. In those days there were old Dons at Cambridge who rampaged like mad bulls, if you just waved red rags at them. If the Don was Mathematical, you waved the Method of Projections: if he was Classical, you waved Archæology. With the Method of Projections a short proof was substituted for a long proof, and the short proof was exact; but the old men had always used the long proof, and were indignant that the same results should [Illustration: THE HALL HOUSE] be obtained so easily; and they had influence enough to get the easy proof prohibited in the Mathematical Tripos. The old Classical men were just as cross with Archæology. They had learned to understand the Ancient World by years of patient study of its literature; and here were upstarts who could understand the Ancient World (perhaps better than they did) by merely looking at its statues, vases, coins and gems. I remember two old Mathematicians dining with us; and after dinner they talked shop, and my father went to sleep in the middle of their talk. Recovering himself, he said, “I beg pardon, Mr X, I fear I dropped asleep while you were speaking.” Mr X replied, “Not at all, Mr Torr, not at all: it was Mr Y who was speaking when you went to sleep.” At a railway-station Mr X was discoursing to some people on the mechanism of the locomotive-engine, continuing his discourse till the train was out of sight; and then he found it was the train he meant to take. He turned upon a porter for not telling him so; and when the porter said, “How was I to know where you were going to?”, he overwhelmed the porter by calling him “You Oaf.”