with Sidney Lee, and Kipling followed us; General Booth, of
the Salvation Army, was in the squadron of D.C.L.'s.

Our journey ended, we were halted in a fine old hall whence we could
see, through a corridor of some length, the massed audience in the
theatre. Here for a little time we moved about and chatted and made
acquaintanceships; then the D.C.L.'s were summoned, and they marched
through that corridor and the shouting began in the theatre. It would be
some time before the Doctors of Literature and of Science would be
called for, because each of those D.C.L.'s had to have a couple of Latin
speeches made over him before his promotion would be complete--one by
the Regius Professor of Civil Law, the other by the Chancellor. After a
while I asked Sir William Ramsay if a person might smoke here and not
get shot. He said, "Yes," but that whoever did it and got caught would
be fined a guinea, and perhaps hanged later. He said he knew of a place
where we could accomplish at least as much as half of a smoke before any
informers would be likely to chance upon us, and he was ready to show
the way to any who might be willing to risk the guinea and the hanging.
By request he led the way, and Kipling, Sir Norman Lockyer and I
followed. We crossed an unpopulated quadrangle and stood under one of
its exits--an archway of massive masonry--and there we lit up and began
to take comfort. The photographers soon arrived, but they were courteous
and friendly and gave us no trouble, and we gave them none. They grouped
us in all sorts of ways and photographed us at their diligent leisure,
while we smoked and talked. We were there more than an hour; then we
returned to headquarters, happy, content, and greatly refreshed.
Presently we filed into the theatre, under a very satisfactory hurrah,
and waited in a crimson column, dividing the crowded pit through the
middle, until each of us in his turn should be called to stand before
the Chancellor and hear our merits set forth in sonorous Latin.
Meantime, Kipling and I wrote autographs until some good kind soul
interfered in our behalf and procured for us a rest.

I will now save what is left of my modesty by quoting a paragraph from
Sydney Brooks's "Ovation."

* * * * *

Let those stars take the place of it for the present. Sydney Brooks has
done it well. It makes me proud to read it; as proud as I was in that
old day, sixty-two years ago, when I lay dying, the ce