"I am very sorry to see by your letter of this morning that you have taken it into your head that I am not reading hard. I can assure you, on the contrary, that I read harder than any freshman except Osborn, who takes no exercise whatever; and that I have made the rowing-men very dissatisfied by reading all day three days a week. On the other three I never read less than six hours, besides four hours of lectures and papers. I have not missed reading a single evening yet since I have been here; that is, either from six, or seven, till eleven, except Saturday at Latham's. This--except for a fourth-year man--is more than even the tutors ask for.... I hope I have said enough to convince you that you are entirely wrong; what has made you so has been my account of breakfasts, which are universal, and neither consume time nor attract attention. I was at one this morning--I left my rooms at twenty-five minutes to nine, and returned to them at five minutes to nine, everything being over." This scrupulous economy of time was to be characteristic of Charles Dilke's whole life, and nothing impressed his contemporaries more at all times than the "methodical bee-like industry" attributed to him by the present Master of Trinity Hall. Mr. Beck, who came up to the college just after Dilke left it, thus expands the impression: "There remained in Trinity Hall in 1867 a vivid tradition that he was one of the few men who never lost a minute, would even get in ten minutes of work between river and Hall (which was in those days at five o'clock); and much resembled the Roman who learned Greek in the time saved from shaving. On the doorpost inside his bedroom over the Buttery there remained in pencil the details of many days of work thus pieced together." [Footnote: _Cambridge Review_, February 2nd, 1911.] Judge Steavenson recalls how he used to be "bundled out" of his friend's rooms the instant that the appointed hour for beginning to read had arrived, and he did his best to mitigate the strenuousness of that application. But there were stronger influences at work than his: Sir Wentworth Dilke was fully satisfied with the assurance he had received, as well he might be; but the grandfather never ceased to enforce the claims of study. He wrote ceaselessly, but with constant exhortations that he should be answered only when work and play allowed. When the letters from Cambridge told of success in athletics, he responded, but with a temperate rejoicing. Here, for instance, is his reference to the news that the freshman had rowed in the winning boat of the scratch fours on March 14th, 1863: