280 LATER YEARS 



three-legged I am become a four-legged man." Many- 

 people would have been embittered by such a calamity, 

 but Newton was never heard to complain ; and he even 

 made light of it in writing to his brother Edward. No 

 man ever had his days more fully filled than were his. 

 Among his papers was found a printed form for the 

 publication of the first issue of " Who's Who," and 

 against the heading of Amusements was scribbled, in 

 his handwriting, " No time for any," 



Happily, however, his double lameness did not keep 

 him a permanent prisoner at Cambridge, and for many 

 years he joined his friend, Henry Evans, of Derby, in 

 cruises about the British Islands. 



Sir Archibald Geikie, who was his fellow-guest in 

 many of these cruises, writes : — 



Year after year " Alfred the Great," as Evans used 

 playfully to call him, was received with open arms, not 

 only by his host, but by every member of the crew. 

 And no one could look forward with keener zest to these 

 holidays than Newton, when for some weeks he could 

 escape from the cares of University life to the firths and 

 sounds of the north and west of Scotland, where no 

 letters could reach him, even if he had left an address 

 behind him, which he was generally careful not to do. 

 Nowhere could he be seen to be more completely in his 

 element than on board of the Aster. He loved the sea 

 and its associations with such a sturdy afi'ection that 

 inclemencies of weather, by no means infrequent in 

 those regions, never drew from him the least sign of 

 impatience, or seemed in any degree to disturb his 

 habitual cheeriness and his enjoyment of the cruise. 

 Clad in the light-grey tweed suit which did duty on 

 these voyages, but without top-coat or waterproof, he 

 would sit for hours on some exposed part of the vessel, 

 smoking innumerable pipes and watching for every 

 variety of sea-fowl that might show itself either in the 



