26 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



developed. The old man to the end was perpetually- 

 inventing ; his strange, ill-spelled, unpunctuated 

 correspondence is full (when he does not drop 

 into cookery receipts) of pumps, road engines, 

 steam-diggers, steam-ploughs, and steam-threshing 

 machines ; and I have it on Fleeming's word that 

 what he did was full of ingenuity — only, as if by 

 some cross destiny, useless. These disappointments 

 he not only took with imperturbable good humour, 

 but rejoiced with a particular relish over his nephew's 

 success in the same field. ' I glory in the professor,' 

 he wrote to his brother ; and to Fleeming himself, 

 with a touch of simple drollery, ' I was much 

 pleased with your lecture but why did you hit me 

 so hard with Conisure's' (connoisseur's, quasi ama- 

 teur's) ' engineering ? Oh, what presumption ! — 

 either of you or myself I ' A quaint, pathetic 

 figure, this of uncle John, with his dung cart and 

 his inventions ; and the romantic fancy of his 

 Mexican house ; and his craze about the Lost 

 Tribes, which seemed to the worthy man the key 

 of all perplexities ; and his quiet conscience, looking 

 back on a life not altogether vain, for he was a good 

 son to his father while his father lived, and when 

 evil days approached, he had proved himself a 

 cheerful Stoic. 



It followed from John's inertia, that the duty of 

 winding up the estate fell into the hands of Charles. 

 He managed it with no more skill than might be 



