Arthur’s progress at the night school was very rapid, and his teacher, a poor book-binder’s assistant, who, for the most moderate of compensations took upon his shoulders the duty of the State, and devoted his evenings to the instruction of half-a-dozen ragged lads and as many grown-up men, soon regarded him as his favourite pupil. Being an observant man he was not long before he discovered the boy’s turn for drawing, having now and then perceived sketches on the backs of his copy-books or on his slate, which, rude as they were, appeared to him to display something of unusual talent in so young a hand. He encouraged Arthur to bring and show him some of the drawings which, as he soon learned, he was in the habit of making at home. On seeing these his teacher was still more surprised and pleased. From that day he added his influence to those many hankerings after a change of occupation which Arthur had himself begun to feel, and promised that, if he came to hear of any place that he thought would suit his pupil, he would do his best to secure it. In the meantime he urged the boy to work hard at his reading and writing, and to such effect that, when Arthur had been attending the classes for a little more than a year, he was already able to read with very fair facility and to write a hand which, if not a striking example of calligraphy, was at all events tolerably legible. He was now approaching the termination of his eleventh year.
One day he had been on an errand for Mrs. Clinkscales into Tottenham Court Road, and had, moreover, as had become rather his habit of late, wandered somewhat out of his direct road, walking dreamily along with his eyes fixed on the pavement, feeding his mind with the dim outlines of a thousand strange or beautiful fancies. He had turned out of Tottenham Court Road into Goodge Street, and thence again into a narrow passage, known as Charlotte Place, and here he stopped, as he always did instinctively, before a shop where newspapers and books were exposed for sale in the windows. It was a very small shop, over the door of which was painted the inscription: “Samuel Tollady, Printer.” As Arthur looked over the illustrated papers which lay open in the window, his eye fell on a card suspended at the back, upon which were the words: “A Boy Wanted.” His heart leaped in his breast as he carefully read these words. Why should he not go in and offer his services? But a sensitive timidity for a time withheld him. Suppose he were to apply, and suppose he were to be so successful as to obtain the place, what would Mrs. Clinkscales say, what would Mike Rumball and Ned Quirk say? His mind drawn hither and thither by questionings and doubts he passed slowly on; he paused; he turned back; again he read the notice. At length, with much apprehension, he resolved upon tempting his fortune, and walked into the shop.
Behind the counter, with a book open on his lap, was sitting an oldish gentleman — gentleman was written upon every line of his face, notwithstanding his circumstances — in spectacles, with head all but bald, and a bold, massive forehead which might have been the envy of a Greek sage. His lips, though firmly knit, had yet a sweetness of expression irresistibly attractive, and his eyes spoke a gentle kindliness which, as they met those of Arthur, at once emboldened him. His dress was marked by a fastidious neatness, though much worn; his waistcoat buttoned close up to his neck, around which he wore an old-fashioned neckerchief, which gave him, at first sight, something of a clerical appearance. As he spoke to Arthur he kept tapping with his fingers on the open pages of his book, evidently a habit with him.
“If you please, sir, do you want a boy?” asked Arthur.
“I do,” replied Mr. Tollady, for he it was, speaking in a grave but musical voice. “Have you come to apply for the place?”
“Yes, if you please, sir.”
The printer surveyed the applicant for a few moments with care, and the results of his examination did not, to judge from the expression of his face, appear unfavourable. Nor indeed was there anything in Arthur’s appearance which should have made it otherwise. During the last two years he had grown considerably, and was now rather tall for his age, but slender and of a strikingly graceful form. His hair had somewhat moderated in its luxuriance of growth, but was still extremely fair, and still fell on each side of his forehead in pleasing ripples. In his features there was nothing vulgar; he was, in reality, a striking resemblance of what his ill-fated father had been at the same age. His eyes were of light blue, his nose of a Grecian type, his lips and chin moulded in form expressive of extreme sensibility and gentleness of disposition, showing traces, moreover, though as yet in but a slight degree, of an instability in moral character which was hereditary. The latter feature was not, however, so predominant that it might not very possibly give way beneath a judicious training. But where was that training to come from?
“What is your age, my boy?” asked Mr. Tollady.
“Nearly eleven, sir.”
“Indeed! I took you for more than twelve. You can read and write?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Arthur, though with more hesitation, dropping his eyes as he spoke.
The old gentleman observed this, and, in a quiet manner which had nothing alarming in it, he proceeded to examine Arthur in these particulars. He appeared satisfied with the result. Then he questioned him about his present position, and at length, after a conversation lasting nearly a quarter of an hour, he dismissed him with the promise that he would himself walk down into Little St. Andrew Street in the course of the day, and see Mr. Rumball.
He kept his word — in his life he had never failed to do so — and had that afternoon a rather lengthy colloquy with Michael, from whom he ultimately learnt as much about Arthur Golding’s antecedents as the latter himself knew.
“You will, I am sure, sir,” said Mr. Tollady, “pardon me the trouble I am giving you. I like this boy’s appearance very much, and should like, if possible, to employ him. But as I do not want a mere errand boy, but one who would live in the house with me and be entrusted with many little things of some importance to me, I should wish to be well assured of the character of the one I engaged.”
Mike listened with bent brows, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets. The fact of the matter was, he was not altogether pleased with this “new departure” of his young lodger. To begin with it appeared to him that, before Arthur had taken any such step as applying for a new situation, he, Michael Rumball, ought certainly to have been consulted; his sense of importance was a trifle hurt. Secondly, there was to be considered the fact that, in the event of Arthur taking the new place, the weekly wages which the boy had hitherto always given into Mrs. Rumball’s hands with scrupulous fidelity each Saturday night would henceforth cease to form an item in the household income. This was serious, and required consideration.
“The boy having come to you under rather peculiar circumstances,” pursued Mr. Tollady, interpreting, with a generosity characteristic of him, Mike’s hesitation in a very much more favourable sense than was its due, “gives you naturally an interest in him, and you must be assured that he will really be making a change for the better in coming to me. Now I think there can be no doubt of it. As I shall provide him with everything, I shall not be able to pay him high wages, but I shall undertake to teach him by degrees my own business, that of a printer, and so put into his hands the means of earning a very good living whenever he leaves me. Does that meet with your approval?”
Mike still hesitated. The voice of selfishness was loud within him at this moment, and all but stifled the still, small voice of conscience which Mike, as years went on, became, it is to be feared, less and less in the habit of heeding.
“I tell you how it is, Mister,” he said at length. “I’ve got a partner like in this ’ere business, an’ that’s Ned Quirk, the man as brought the lad ‘ome that night I was tellin’ yer of. Now I think, yer see, as I ought to talk it over with Ned afore I come to a decision. Suppose we say I talk it over to-night, an you comes an’ sees me agin tomorrow; will that suit?”
Mr. Tollady perforce adopted this decision, and took his leave. The same night Michael Rumball communicated the visit to Ned Quirk. In all probability he would not have done so at all, and would have contented himself with returning an unfavourable answer to his visitor on the morrow, but for the reflection that Arthur would doubtless himself acquaint Ned with what he had done, and thus render the artifice useless. Ned, to do him justice, was made of firmer clay than Mike, and, when he heard the opportunity which lay before his protégé, even though it was made to appear as untempting as possible by Mike’s perverse description, he had not two opinions on the matter, but immediately affirmed that the place must be secured. A long and somewhat heated discussion followed, during which Mike inveighed, with something of that eloquence which had formerly been at the service of the Ranter persuasion, against that deplorable pride of intellect which Ned had always, he said, done his best to instil into the lad and which would one day, mark that! be his ruin. He hadn’t much opinion, for his own part, of reading and writing for boys, for they were clearly a direct temptation to forgery; but for a boy to become a printer was still worse, inasmuch as it inevitably led to the fabrication of spurious bank-notes, whereupon would follow exportation and all its concomitant evils. Ned Quirk laughed these remarks to scorn and was strong in his support of the gospel of “getting on,” which is no bad gospel after all, if read in its true sense, but which, like some other gospels that could be mentioned, is not unfrequently sadly misinterpreted. Ned had a respect for learning, while Mike certainly had not, and in a matter such as this, where he was truly interested, would yield to no man. For the first time since their acquaintance a serious breach seemed likely to take place between these two worthies; but, just at the critical stage, Mrs. Rumball came in with a woman’s tact and was successful in allaying the storm. She had always entertained a great respect for Ned Quirk’s opinions, and now she placed herself on his side in the argument. The result could not be doubtful; Mike yielded, though, after all, with but an ill grace, and it was decided that Arthur should go to Mr. Tollady’s.
Of course a week’s notice had to be given to Mrs. Clinkscales, which that lady received with a slight toss of the head, and a wish that the boy might find better treatment elsewhere than he had received from her, expressed in a tone which clearly indicated that she had no expectation of the wish being realised. Arthur had only one real sorrow in leaving the scene of his earliest servitude, and that was that he should no more be able to watch each day the coming and going of the blue frock and hat with the partridge feather, around which had woven themselves the brightest of his boyish dreams and fancies. Yes, even his hopes had, in a measure, connected themselves with Lizzie. Speculating, as children do, on the course of his future life, he had often determined in his own mind that he would work hard till he became “rich,” not rich only as Mrs. Clinkscales would have understood the word, but superlatively wealthy. And when that time came, when he had made his money, had bought a large house in one of those magnificent quarters of the town which he seldom visited, had servants without end and all manner of luxury, then he would one day order his finest horses to be harnessed in his finest carriage, in which he would forthwith drive down to Little St. Andrew Street and carry off Lizzie with him as his bride. 0, sweet visions, gilding with their refulgence even the squalid everyday life of a London slum; and thrice sweet hope, which, blossoming most luxuriantly in the hearts of the young, feeds with its rich fragrance every ardent thought. When the day came on which he was to leave, he saw Lizzie go to school and return as usual, watched her with unwonted sadness in his eyes, was glad at length when he received a smile and a nod, and little thought that he had looked on the queen of his imagination for the last time.
Mr. Tollady received him with his former kind smile, and lost no time in making him acquainted with the circle of his new duties. The sphere in which he would henceforth live was a very wide one. Behind the little shop, where, besides newspapers, prints, cheap books, and general stationery were sold, was the single room in which Mr. Tollady himself lived, a darkish little place; and passing out of that by a side door, which led to the foot of the stairs, one ascended to the printing office, likewise a very small room, smelling strongly of printer’s ink, where one man was generally employed as compositor. It was easy to judge from these premises that Mr. Tollady’s business was not extensive. Within this printing office a door led into what had previously been an old lumber-room, some six feet square, lighted by a small casement. This had just been cleaned out and converted into a very neat little bed-room, henceforth Arthur’s.
Arthur took his meals with Mr. Tollady in the little parlour at the back of the shop, breakfast, tea, and supper being prepared by the latter himself; the more important meal at midday, however, being brought in on a tray from a coffee-house in Goodge Street. For an hour each day one of the girls, in a poor family next door, came into the house and did what household work was required. It was distinctive of Mr. Tollady, that, though his opportunities of giving employment were not large, yet he was most judicious in the choice of those he did employ, invariably finding those who were really in want of work, and holding that, c?teris paribus, those who come most closely within the circle of your every-day relationships, have the most claims upon you for assistance. Arthur did not fail to examine closely the details of his new abode, and more particularly the parlour, which was to him the most interesting room. The window certainly had no tempting prospect. It looked into a paved back yard, with a cistern in one corner of it, the principal variety in the scene being afforded on those days when the yard was thickly hung with newly-washed linen. Immediately opposite was a window, apparently that of a darkish parlour, much like Mr. Tollady’s, and attached to the sill of the window was a long box containing various flowering plants. The circumstance of this box being carved and painted in front so as to represent the broadside of a man-of-war, gave a certain originality to its appearance, and afforded Arthur Golding frequent subject for observation during the first few days.
One side of the parlour was occupied by a large book-case, which contained the whole of Mr. Tollady’s library. It was not extensive, but select in the choice of works. Here were the principal English classics, most of them evidently having been purchased second-hand, and also a few French and German books. The library was evidently that of a man who had known how to cultivate judiciously the emotional side of his nature; the only books really bound with any degree of richness were the poets. Theological works there were none, and natural science was alone represented by a few works on botany; but the collection of histories was complete and good. The lowest shelf was occupied by the Penny Cyclop?dia, an old folio edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, and a number of large volumes laid flat, one on the other, the contents of which could not be guessed at. Around the walls hung a few good prints of works by the old masters, and a bust of Shakespeare and Milton stood at either end of the mantel-piece. Opposite was a large chest of drawers, which at night time was converted into a bed for Mr. Tollady’s own use. On the window-sill outside bloomed one or two geraniums, fuchsias, and lobelias.
One of Arthur’s first duties in the morning was to be standing at the corner of Charlotte Place and Goodge Street at half-past six in order to catch the bundle of daily papers thrown to him from the news-agent’s cart, which passed by at that time, after which he was first of all engaged in separating out and folding the papers, and in pasting the placards on to the boards to be exhibited outside the shop; after that he had to go the round of the regular customers, of whom there were some fifty, delivering to each the daily newspaper. On the first morning he was accompanied as a guide by the boy whom Mr. Tollady had previously employed in this work, and returned shortly before nine.
He found Mr. Tollady sitting at his desk, over his ledger. He did not seem to be engaged in working at it, but, though his eye was fixed on the page, he was clearly wandering very far away in his thoughts. He did not notice Arthur’s entrance, but continued, sunk in his reverie till the clock of the Middlesex Hospital, hard by, suddenly struck nine, and brought him back, with a deep sigh, to actual life. Raising his head he saw Arthur and smiled, but sadly, and then seemed to make an effort to return to his wonted manner. There was something in this which even a boy, particularly a boy of Arthur’s intelligence, could not help being struck with. Arthur felt his master was not happy, and a feeling of sympathy began to be added to that gratitude and reverence which he had from the first conceived towards him.
Mr. Tollady came from his desk and proceeded to give Arthur a task which would occupy him some little time, namely, to sort, make up into bundles, and ticket a great heap of miscellaneous papers which lay in one corner of the shop, and which, for some reason, it was desired to preserve. The boy had not been engaged thus more than a few minutes when two men entered the shop together, both hatless and in slippers, as if they had come from next door. The appearance of these individuals merits a slight description.
The one who advanced first was a very short man, quite bald, with meagre but strongly-marked features, and with eyes rather blood-shot. His nose was very much hooked, and his gums, which he frequently displayed in speaking, almost toothless. He had a decided stoop in the shoulders, and bandy-legs; in short, it was not difficult to judge from his appearance that he was a tailor by trade. His companion was tall, also very bald, and of morose aspect; his left cheek was marked with a large wine-coloured stain which gave a decidedly unpleasant look to his countenance. He seemed affected with habitual nervousness, at times almost amounting, in his hands, to St. Vitus’ Dance; he was perpetually biting first his lower, then his upper lip, with a fierce persistency which seemed to betoken some constant excitement in his mind. His dress was of the shabbiest, but gave no indication of his trade. He was, in fact, a seller of new, and a restorer of old umbrellas. Both of these individuals lived in Charlotte Place, and both every morning just at this hour entered Mr. Tollady’s shop in company.
Each advanced to the counter, deposited his penny, and received his morning paper, but, instead of at once departing, they took possession of two chairs which stood in front of the counter, and began to unfold their papers.
For a quarter of an hour no one spoke (at their entrance they had confined their morning salutations to a friendly nod, which had been similarly replied to by Mr. Tollady), at the end of that time, the bald little man suddenly broke silence by reading, without preface, a paragraph which seemed particularly to have attracted his attention. He did so in an emphatic, here and there in a fierce voice. The paragraph ended thus: —
“The Magistrate replied that, if what had been said were true, it was evident that scandalous injustice had been done. The perpetrator of that injustice had not, however, brought himself within reach of the jurisdiction of that Court, and the only course open was to institute a civil suit. Under the circumstances, he could not advise the appellants to do this, inasmuch as the suit would probably be of long duration, and, as he was a poor man, might end in his ruin.”
The reading of this was received in silence, but with looks which very clearly intimated the sentiments of the listeners. The reader, after noting the impression on the faces of the other two, began to speak in an excited manner.
“There, there it is again! Precisely the words the Magistrate used to me the day I first asked for advice. He warned me, and my friends warned me. They said, one and all: ‘Mark Challenger! begin this suit, and you’re a ruined man.’ But I wouldn’t be warned. I said: ‘If there’s such a thing as law in this country, if there’s such a thing as justice in England, I’ll have it, cost what it may!’ For three years I was at law, and then the suit wasn’t at an end. But I was. Ha, ha, ha!”
And he burst into a long fit of savage laughter.
“Am I right, Sam Tollady? Am I right, John Pether?” he continued, in his exasperated tone. “When do I take up a paper that I don’t find in it an instance of what I’m always saying: ‘For the poor man there’s no such thing as law or justice in England.’ Is it going to be always so? Are we going to be always ground beneath the money-bags of these smooth-tongued publicans and sinners? Which are in the majority, I should like to know — the rich or the poor? Why, I say, do we endure it?”
“Because we are cowards, Mark Challenger,” replied John Pether, his voice sounding almost sepulchral after the shrill fierce tones of the former speaker. “Because we are cowards, one and all. Why did I let the tax-gatherer take the last penny out of my house when my children were dying for food? Because I had not the courage to strike the man dead, and offer myself a martyr to the cause of justice. That’s why, Mark Challenger.”
“You wouldn’t have done much good, John,” interrupted Mr. Tollady, his voice and manner a strong contrast to the wild excitement of the one, the concentrated ferocity of the other of his companions. “The tax-gatherer did you no wrong. It was the system, not the man, that was at fault. Strike dead at a blow the passions and the vices and the pestiferous creeds of Society — then let them make a martyr of you if they can!”
“It’s all very well for you, Sam Tollady,” jerked in Mark. “I often say to myself: ‘How is it,’ I say, ‘that Sam Tollady can be so calm and so quiet over all his wrongs and his sufferings, when John Pether and me get so savage over ours?’ And I’ve always come to the conclusion that it’s because you’ve only suffered in yourself, Sam; you’ve never had either wife or children to share your wrongs, and that’s made it easier for you to bear them. But John Pether and me has had double suffering. We’ve borne our own share, and, besides that, we’ve had to watch our wives and children hunger and die at our sides. Isn’t that enough to make us wild, Sam Tollady? Am I right?”
Mr. Tollady replied with his usual calmness, but in a voice full of sympathy; and for half an hour the conversation continued very much in the same strain, fresh excitement being derived from the newspapers if ever it lapsed for a moment. Then the two friends rose to depart; but Mark Challenger, noticing Arthur for the first time, pointed to him —
“A fixture, Sam?” he asked.
Mr. Tollady nodded, smiling.
“Train him up in the way he should go, Sam!” he exclaimed fiercely, grasping the printer’s arm. “Make a Radical of him — a Revolutionist! Teach him his wrongs, Sam; let him see the cause of his miseries, and the cure! You can do it, Sam; you can do it!”
“I dare say he might make an apt scholar,” said Mr. Tollady, in a low voice. “He seems to me by no means an ordinary boy.”
“Good!” replied the other; then, turning to Arthur, cried to him: “Come here, my lad!”
Arthur obeyed, and Mark grasped him by the coat collar.
“Boy!” he exclaimed in his usual excited tones, “have you known a single happy day in your life?”
“I — I think so, sir,” stammered the boy, half frightened at the other’s manner, and scarcely understanding the question.
“Have you ever been hungry?” persisted Mark Challenger, in irritated tones; “hungry, and without means of buying bread? Hungry — fiercely, savagely hungry, like a wild beast, till you could gnaw wood or shoe-leather? Have you ever felt like that, boy?”
“Yes, sir; often,” replied Arthur, and with much truth.
“I knew it!” cried Mark. “See!” he added, pointing to Mr. Tollady. “He’ll tell you why you were hungry! He’ll tell you who it is robs you of the means of buying food and clothing! Mind what he tells you, my lad, that’s all; and when you grow up make use of it.”
And, flinging the boy almost angrily from him, Mark Challenger nodded to Mr. Tollady and left the shop, followed by John Pether, who had fallen into a fit of moody abstraction.
“Did he frighten you, Arthur?” asked the printer with a smile, when the men had gone.
“A little, at first, sir.”
“You mustn’t mind his strange ways,” replied Mr. Tollady, returning to his desk. “Mr. Challenger is a good man at heart, but he has had severe hardships, and they have almost driven him mad. Now let us get on with our work.”
And as he turned away he sighed to himself —
“For the night cometh, wherein no man can work.”
A great part of the day Mr. Tollady spent upstairs in the printing office, where he himself worked in connection with his assistant. The extent of his business was not great, but that which was entrusted to him he performed, according to the rule of his life, with the utmost perfection his abilities rendered possible. When he came down to partake of his meals in company with Arthur he talked kindly and pleasantly, as his habit was, and was evidently exerting himself to win as speedily as possible the confidence, and even the affection, of his young assistant.
Samuel Tollady was not one of those men who have so worn off the keen edge of their spiritual perceptions by rough jolting and jarring against their fellow men that any stranger they happen to come into contact with is of as little interest to them, except in so far as he serves their ends, as the very stones they tread upon in the street. To his new master Arthur was more than a piece of human machinery which had been taken in and set to work, and was only to be spared excessive toil or capricious brutality that his powers of future exertion might not be unduly injured. He was, rather, a young and promising bud on the great tree of humanity, a child of human pain and sorrow, but also with human needs and aspirations, the latter very possibly, as Mr. Tollady began already to perceive; in a higher degree than the majority of mankind. He had lived many years amidst terrible degradation, and yet was not degraded; had associated with those whose ends and aims were for the most part of the basest nature, and yet he had already shown signs of a yearning for the fruits of knowledge. Mr. Tollady’s interest grew rapidly in Arthur; he watched him, tested him, and studied him with the utmost care. And as yet he found nothing to make him believe his interest was misplaced.
Looking upon the boy as a human soul, and not as a mere piece of useful machinery in his shop, Mr. Tollady soon conceived the idea of using his leisure to continue the very imperfect education which Arthur had as yet received. Accordingly the evenings — when the printing office was closed, and only a few customers had to be attended to in the shop — soon began to be spent in the mutual giving and receiving of instruction. Mr. Tollady had ideas of his own on the subject of education, and felt a keen pleasure in being able to put them into practice. Life seemed very soon to acquire a new value, a new significance for him. He was not so often absorbed in fits of melancholy brooding as previously.
And if the teacher benefited by his work, the pupil did so even in a higher degree. Appreciating intensely the consistent kindness of his master, Arthur progressed wonderfully under his instruction; his zeal for his work knew no bounds; where other boys of his age thought of nothing but their tops, their marbles, and their hoops, Arthur was uneasy when away from the tasks which had been set him. Now and then his thoughts returned to Lizzie. What would he give to be able to acquaint her with his progress!
But the direct instruction which he received from his master was not the sole benefit for which Arthur was indebted to him. To live with Mr. Tollady and observe his actions from day to day was in itself an education.
In ministering to his bodily needs the printer was frugal almost to asceticism, partly, perhaps, owing to the habits bred in him by a long struggle with poverty. He was a vegetarian on principle, and water was his only drink. It would, indeed, have gone somewhat hard with Arthur if he, too, had been confined to such a diet, but Mr. Tollady knew what was due to a growing boy, and stinted him in nothing. By dint of severe economy he succeeded in keeping a small sum of money always by him, only to be drawn upon for purposes of charity. He was charitable in the true sense of the word, not giving his pence indiscriminately to a beggar in the street, but following patient misery into its secret hiding-places, and coupling active assistance where he saw it would be useful with strong, manly, wise words of advice and comfort. Not a few young girls living in the gloomy neighbourhood where his shop was situated had to thank the hand of Samuel Tollady for having checked them on the precipice of ruin; not a few toiling wives and mothers, cursed with husbands whose lives were spent alternately in the gin-palace and the gaol, were indebted to his benevolence for the help which kept them from the workhouse. But so secret was his alms-giving that it is doubtful whether any but the recipients had any knowledge of it; the neighbours generally looked upon him as a quiet, agreeable sort of man, but not unfrequently hinted at his having miserly habits. Mark Challenger and John Pether, who were very old acquaintances of his, had a suspicion of the truth, but were themselves too retired in their habits of life to spread reports concerning it.
At five o’clock each morning, whatever the season of the year, Mr. Tollady rose, and for two hours was engaged in reading. He read little besides the works in his own library, and with these, thanks to many perusals, he had obtained a thorough acquaintance, such as it is to be feared, even few professedly learned men can boast, with the standard works of our literature. Throughout the day he spoke little, the words he exchanged with his two constant visitors each morning, and the instruction he gave to Arthur at night constituting the chief part of his conversation. Yet he was never morose; only at times very sad in appearance. Whomsoever he spoke to, it was with a gentleness of tone which never varied; harshness he seemed incapable of. Nevertheless he was not what we understand by a loveable man; he had too few social qualities for that. In all with whom he stood on ordinary grounds of acquaintanceship he never failed to inspire respect; it needed that he should unfold himself in the closest intimacy that he might be regarded with affection.
I have said that his shelves held a few works on botany, and this had always been the favourite study of his lighter hours. In his youth he had lived much amid the beauties of nature, and had been an ardent botanist. He had ultimately collected a herbarium which had been of considerable value in the eyes of men of kindred taste, but at one period of his life, overtaken by the direst poverty, he had disposed of this for a slight sum, only retaining a small collection in the shape of duplicates and imperfect specimens. It was this collection which filled the large volumes which have been noticed as lying on the lowest shelves of his book case. Every Sunday evening it was his habit to lift these volumes on to the table and go over them with a longing hand and a fond look, as each plant recalled to his mind the scenes amidst which it had been gathered. When late in the night he replaced them, after carefully shaking out the dust and seeing that the leaves were sprinkled with camphor to preserve them from insects, it was often with trembling hands and a moist eye.