A GATHERING OF NOTABLES 



My trusty henchman and I started for Oxford 

 a day before we were wanted, as I was glad to 

 renew old associations and to give Jordan a little 

 longer opportunity of enjoying much that he would 

 appreciate. 



We met the following morning at the Municipal 

 Buildings, where the Mayor received all invited 

 to take part in the celebration. The civic head- 

 quarters is a palatial edifice, very up-to-date and 

 ornate in character, and replete with all that the 

 most exacting City Councillor could desire in the 

 matter of luxurious equipment. It is of very 

 modern origin, supplanting what, in the days of my 

 youth, I was accustomed to regard with respectful 

 admiration as a noble structure worthy even of 

 the civic fathers who orated in it. But municipal 

 ideas march with the times, and their exponents 

 are no longer content with such housing as their 

 forerunners thought good enough, and so these 

 richly adorned and expansive and expensive- 

 embodiments of a deco'rative age have sprung up 

 all over the kingdom. 



We found the Central Hall, its imposing marble 

 staircase and spacious corridors, thronged by a 

 goodly array of notabilities and officials in all 

 their war paint bishops, deans, M.P.'s, D.D.'s, 

 D.C.L.'s, mayors, heads of houses, etc., not for- 

 getting the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London. 

 We were all commingled, and as the robes of 

 some of the higher University degrees rivalled 

 those of the Mayors in brilliancy there was no lack 

 of colour to light up the scene. There was a 

 general buzz of conversation as we waited for some 

 directing power to tell us what to do next. Suddenly 



297 



