assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later young Major
Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew,
young Herbert, who was only five years younger than his
uncle, and Herbert's friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in
their third term at the university. After five years' service
in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights" week at Oxford,
and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious,
given to study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he
read Galsworthy; instead of "wines" he found pleasure in
debating clubs where he discussed socialism. Ragging,
practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes, that once were wont to set
England in a roar, were a lost art. His undergraduate guests
combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms they declared
unjust and without intelligence.

"You're talking rot!" said his dutiful nephew. "Take Phil
here, for example. I've roomed with him three years and I can
testify that he has never opened a book. He never heard of
Galsworthy until you spoke of him. And you can see for
yourself his table manners are quite as bad as yours!"

"Worse!" assented Birrell loyally.

"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as
ours; as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five
hundred people sat through a temperance lecture and never
guessed they were listening to a man from Balliol?"