Page:Six Major Prophets (1917).djvu/220

 One would have thought that printing had never been invented, nor even the mimeograph. The lecture was delivered slowly, and necessarily without feeling, clause by clause, with frequent repetitions, so every word could be taken down. It was really a brilliant lecture as I discovered afterwards when I read over my notes, but at the time it sounded as dull as proof-reading, for the lecturer dictated even the punctuation marks, as he went along: "colon", "Italics", "inverted commas", etc. The English leave out the punctuation marks in legal documents where they are needed and put them into lectures where they do not belong.

The students, in short black gowns, were seated uncomfortably on benches carved with the names of many generations, and were writing awkwardly on long boards. These were furnished with inkwells and quill pens, although the students sensibly used fountain pens. I suppose it is somebody's perquisite to supply such things as quills and snuff to the college even if nobody uses them. An American college president told me that he thought there was more graft at Oxford than anywhere else in the world.

If Mr. Schiller had remained in America he would now be lecturing to one or two hundred at a time,