Nearly all the flights in this book have been first taken in the

    Cornhill Magazine

   , the

    Oxford Magazine

   , or the

    Saturday Review

   . They are reproduced by the kind permission of the Editors of these periodicals. I am allowed also to reprint a set of verses published by Messrs. Constable & Co.

   A. D. G.

    November

   , 1912

   [

    Literally Translated by a Balliol First-Class Man

   ]

   [On a Proposal to place Bicycles within the precincts of the Bodleian Library]

   I. Not concerning a thing of no moment, O Conscript Fathers, you are now called upon to decide: whether to one man by the counsel and advice of Curators it is to be permitted that he should take away from you the power of placing in the Proscholium the instruments of celerity, the assistances of (your) feet, the machines appointed by a certain natural providence for the performance of your duties: whether, in which place our ancestors sold pigs with the greatest consent and indeed applause of the Roman people, from that (place) bicycles are to be ejected by one guardian of books. O singular impudence of the man! For be unwilling, Conscript Fathers, be unwilling to believe

   that in this pretence of consulting for (the interests of) a public building something more is not also being aimed at and sought to be obtained: in such a way (

    lit.

   so) he attacks bicycles that in reality he endeavours 

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