The world has ceased to be remarkable; and one tends to think
more and more often of the days when it was so very remarkable indeed.
I suppose that had I been thirty years older when first I knew him,
William would have seemed to me little worthier of attention than a
twopenny postage-stamp seems to-day. Yet, no: William really had some
oddities that would have caught even an oldster's eye. In himself he
was commonplace enough (as I, coeval though I was with him, soon saw).
But in details of surface he was unusual. In them he happened to be
rather ahead of his time. He was a socialist, for example. In 1890
there was only one other socialist in Oxford, and he not at all an
undergraduate, but a retired chimney-sweep, named Hines, who made
speeches, to which nobody, except perhaps William, listened, near the
Martyrs' Memorial. And William wore a flannel shirt, and rode a
bicycle--very strange habits in those days, and very horrible. He was
said to be (though he was short-sighted and wore glasses) a first-rate
`back' at football; but, as football was a thing frowned on by the
rowing men, and coldly ignored by the bloods, his talent for it did
not help him: he was one of the principal pariahs of our College; and
it was rather in a spirit of bravado, and to show how sure of myself I
was, that I began, in my second year, to cultivate his acquaintance.
Pages:
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235