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.”
A girl was singing in a hay-field about the new-mown hay, and Mr Y rebuked her. If it was only new-mown, it was grass: it would not become hay till it had undergone a process of fermentation. She looked so sad that I struck in, saying ‘hay’ meant hedge. (I am not so sure about it now as I was then; but ‘hay’ sounds very like ‘haie,’ which is the French for ‘hedge,’ and Anglo-Saxon ‘hæg’ comes down to ‘hay’ as well as ‘dæg’ to ‘day.’) I declared that the grass had been hay from the time when it was hedged, that is, layed up for mowing; and, getting bolder, I declared it had been hay ever since the seeds were sown. The distinction is, you put in grasses that ripen in succession if you are sowing for pasture, and grasses that ripen simultaneously if you are sowing for hay. Mr Y said that he did not care for these distinctions, and walked away repeating ‘fermentation.’ And the girl was singing again.
On roads near Cambridge one often saw Dons walking steadily on till they came to a mile-stone, touching the stone with their hands, and then walking just as steadily back. They had found out by experience how many miles they needed for their afternoon walk, and they always walked that number of miles, neither more nor less. An undergraduate told me that he went out for a walk one Saturday afternoon with a foreign Jew, who was at Cambridge lecturing; and he wondered how the Sabbath Day’s Journey would work in. Instead of turning back at a mile-stone, the pious man took out a biscuit, put it down, and then walked on; and he did the same at every mile-stone that they passed. On getting back, my friend inquired about the biscuits; and the answer was quite clear--a Sabbath Day’s Journey is a certain distance from your home; and the Mishnah says that where your food is, there also is your home. The biscuits were his food, and every mile-stone was his home.