University and its colleges and the town had a wonderful fascination
for me, but I think, as I look back at it and try to sum up its
influence upon me, that the personality of the "Master of
Balliol"--Benjamin Jowett--was the greatest and the most permanent
thing I received.

I had been striving for years to slough off from my tongue a thick
Irish brogue, and had not succeeded very well. The elegance and the
chasteness of Jowett's English did more for me in this respect than my
years of pruning. I have never heard such English, and behind this
master language of a master mind, there was a man, a gentleman! I
wrote Dr. Jowett a note one day, asking for an interview. It may have
been the execrable handwriting that interested him; but I had a most
polite note in return, stating the hour at which he would be glad to
see me. I remember attempting in a very awkward, childish way to
explain to him something of my ambition to make progress in my
studies, and how poorly prepared I was and how handicapped in various
ways. He rose from his seat, took down a book from a shelf, consulted
it and put it back, and then he told me in a few words of a Spanish
soldier who had entered the University of Paris at the age of
thirty-three and became an influence that was world-wide. This, by way
of encouragement. The model held up had very little effect upon me,
but this personal interview, this close touch with the man who himself
was a model, was a great inspiration to me, and remains with me one of
the most pleasant memories of my life.

My first lecture was given in the town hall at my home town in
Ireland during the first week of my after-campaign furlough. The
townspeople filled the hall, more out of curiosity than to hear the
lecture, for when the cobbler's son had left the town a few years