An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

132 AUTOBIOGRAPHY my daughter left, and on the 15th, I and others ineffect– ually voted for the Conservative Candidate at Norwich, Tillett getting in easily, Roberts a very bad third. On the 26th, I had a very welcome visit from my old friend, F. J. Furuivall, who bad been transcribing one of Mr. J. H. Gurney's MSS. at Keswick. During the next few months I undertook the Chairmanship of a Debating Society in connection with Thorpe Hamlet Church, which I fear has now gone the way of nearly all these ephemeral societies. I gave a lecture on Cringleford and its history, for Mr. F. W. Harmer on the 4th February, and next day attended a very excellent dinner given to the Local Law Society by Mr. Oddin Taylor in Black Friars Hall, where my then pet aversion got red in the face with supp1essed wrath at not being asked to make a speech. On the r3th, I lectured on " Practical Joking " at the Training School to an appreciative audience, but I fear to the disgust of the too proper authorities, and in the week after I bad the pleasure(?) of listeniug to a lecture delivered by some one else, which lasted two hours and seven minutes. Personally, I had learnt by experience that anything over an hour bores one's audience, and I always rehearsed my effects to a stop watch before giving them. Of course there are exceptionally good lectures. I remember listen– ing to a lecture by one of the Bensons, which exceeded even two hours and seven minutes, but which I actually would have liked longer. But they are scarce-very scarce. On the 25th, I gave my abu ·ive lecture on " Taste and Want of Taste" in N om ich (afterwards printed) to a packed audience at the Strangers' Hall, my coadjutor, Mr. Harry Brittain, having taken great pains with the slides, which after all are everyt bing, unless a talented man like Benson is the lecturer. The immediate cause of my lecture was the vandalism of the Dean and Chapter who were pulling down a great piece of the old precinct wall of the Cathedral, to build on its site a row of hideous small villas. Taking this as my text, I showed slides of the wall as it used to be, and the offending houses which replaced it, the corrugated iron fence, and the hideous motor house in the Close. Outside the Close I showed a slide of the terrible urinal on Tombland, which profaned and obscured the Erpingham gate, the equally terrible War Memorial, the "Time Ball" on the