Good Stories from Oxford and Cambridge and the Dioceses (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II UNIVERSITY STOEIES Ct)irteenti) to ijcteentb Centurie0 How often have the classic buildings excited curiosity and caused the question to rise upon the lips, "If these walls could only speak, what tales they would unfold " These are the very tales which successive generations of dons have told in the common-rooms, and which have found their way to the undergraduates, to be retailed behind sported oaks and to provide fun on the time-worn staircases. As they gained publicity they added to the merriment in hall, or made the cloisters and quads resound with light-hearted laughter. Then, at the end of term, when the men went down, these same stories went with them, to be retold in castle, manor-house, or rectory to a delighted family circle. Thus they have passed from son to father and from father to son during six hundred years of English history---a history which has been so largely made, and nobly made, by the University men themselves. And now, as I send them forth in book form, they seem to me lacking in but one thing--the warmth of a bright, virile human voice such as, in old days, so often added to their value. "There goes a story which, because I find it among the Ludicra of an eminent person, remembered by him from papers about seventy years ago (about 1595), I now insert. Once upon a time several scholars of Cambridge came to dispute with the scholars of Oxford, with fair promises to themselves of returning conquerors, the which Fryer Bacon hearing, fained himself a Thatcher, and when he was upon a house at Oxford Townesend, he, upon the approach of the Cantabrigians, came down to meet, and, drawing near to them, one of the Cantabrigians said to him, 'Eustice quid quaeris?' (Country fellow, what are you seeking?). Bacon the Thatcher answere...