He became a member of the junior debating society, the Philosophical, but hardly ever took any part in their discussions.
[Illustration: Dr.Sir William Wilde] "He read for the Berkeley medal (which he afterwards gained) with an excellent, but at the same time broken-down, classical scholar, John Townsend Mills, and, besides instruction, he contrived to get a good deal of amusement out of his readings with his quaint teacher.

He told me for instance that on one occasion he expressed his sympathy for Mills on seeing him come into his rooms wearing a tall hat completely covered in crape.

Mills, however, replied, with a smile, that no one was dead--it was only the evil condition of his hat that had made him assume so mournful a disguise.

I have often thought that the incident was still fresh in Oscar Wilde's mind when he introduced John Worthing in 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' in mourning for his fictitious brother....
"Shortly before he started on his first trip to Italy, he came into my rooms in a very striking pair of trousers.

I made some chaffing remark on them, but he begged me in the most serious style of which he was so excellent a master not to jest about them.
"'They are my Trasimene trousers, and I mean to wear them there.'" Already his humour was beginning to strike all his acquaintances, and what Sir Edward Sullivan here calls his "puremindedness," or what I should rather call his peculiar refinement of nature.