ABSTRACT
There is a well-attested story of the celebrated Dr Routh, who lived from 1755 to 1854. His boyhood was passed at Beccles in Suffolk and he was President of Magdalen College at Oxford for 63 years. In about 1850, an undergraduate from Suffolk casually arrived in college a fortnight after term had begun. His tutor assumed the President would want him sent down. ‘Ah, sir, the roads in Suffolk are very bad at this time of the year’, was the kindly old man’s reply. ‘But Mr President, he didn’t come by road.’ ‘The Suffolk roads in winter I do assure you are very bad for travelling.’ ‘But he didn’t come by the road, sir, he came by the “rail”.’ ‘Eh, sir? The “what” did you say? I don’t know anything about “that”.’
