could not ask my feet to climb the stairs
Which link that mansion's three-and-thirty rooms;
And, if the Law must have so clean a fame
That none can point to where a speck of dust is,
A single bathroom cannot meet the claim
Of equitable Justice.

My wants are modest, you will please remark;
I crave no vintage of the Champagne zone,
No stalled chargers neighing for the Park,
No 9.5 cigars (I have my own);
I do not ask, who am the flower of thrift,
For Orient-rugs or "Persian apparatus";
Nothing is lacking save a bath and lift
To fill my soul's hiatus.

And, should my plea for reasonable perks
(Barely four thousand pounds) be flatly quashed;
Should kind Sir ALF, Commissioner of Works,
Be forced to leave me liftless and half-washed;
Then for these homely needs of which I speak,
Content with my old pittance from the nation,
In Grosvenor Square (or Berkeley) I will seek
Private accommodation.

O.S.

* * * * *

BACK TO THE CAM.

College head-porters as a class assuredly rank amongst the dignified
things of the earth. One may admire the martial splendour of a
Brigadier-General, and it is not to be denied that Rear-Admirals have
a certain something about them which excites both awe and delight, but
they are never quite the same thing as a college head-porter. There
may be weak spots in the profession, and indeed in one or two of the
less self-respecting colleges the head-porters scarcely rise above the
level of the Dons; but these are distinctly exceptional. As a class
they stand, as I said, amongst the dignified things of life.

Parsons is our head-porter, and perhaps he is the sublimest of them
all. Freshmen raise their squares to him, and Oriental students can
rarely bring themselves to enter the porter's lodge during their first
term without previously removing their shoes. Few except fourth-year
men have the temerity to address him as "Parsons" to his face; it
seems such an awful thing to do, like keeping a chapel in bedroom
slippers or walking arm-in-arm with a Blue. You feel awkward about it.

In order to give you a shadowy idea of Parsons' majesty I must hark
back for a moment to a certain day in November, 1914, when Biffin and
I, after a brief dalliance with the C.U.O.T.C., left Cambridge to join
our regiments. It was pouring with rain, but we were elated in spirit;
we had our commissions; t