66 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



'not even allow that people admire ugly things, 

 they admire what is pretty in the ugly thing.' And 

 before he sat down to write his letter, he thought 

 he had hit upon the explanation. ' I fancy the 

 true idea,' he wrote, ' is that you must never do 

 yourself or any one else a moral injury — make any 

 man a thief or a liar — ^for any end ' ; quite a differ- 

 ent thing, as he would have loved to point out, 

 from never stealing or lying. But this perfervid 

 disputant was not always out of key with his 

 audience. One whom he met in the same house 

 announced that she would never again be happy. 

 ' What does that signify ? ' cried Fleeming. ' We 

 are not here to be happy but to be good.' And the 

 words (as his hearer writes to me) became to her a 

 sort of motto during life. 

 Fleeming From Fairbaim's and Manchester, Fleeming 

 wich. passed to a railway survey in Switzerland, and 

 thence again to Mr. Penn's at Greenwich, where 

 he was engaged as draughtsman. There in 1856, 

 we find him in ' a terribly busy state, finishing up 

 engines for innumerable gun-boats and steam frigates 

 for the ensuing campaign.' From half -past eight 

 in the morning till nine or ten at night, he worked 

 in a crowded office among uncongenial comrades, 

 * saluted by chaff, generally low personal and not 

 witty,' pelted with oranges and apples, regaled 

 with dirty stories, and seeking to suit himself with 

 his surroundings or (as he writes it) tiying to be as 



