84 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



already made his mark among the few who had an 

 opportunity of knowing him. 

 His His marriage was the one decisive incident of his 



life. career; from that moment until the day of his 



death, he had one thought to which all the rest 

 were tributary, the thought of his wife. No one 

 could know him even slightly, and not remark the 

 absorbing greatness of that sentiment ; nor can any 

 picture of the man be drawn that does not in pro- 

 portion dwell upon it. This is a delicate task ; but 

 if we are to leave behind us (as we wish) some pre- 

 sentment of the friend we have lost, it is a task 

 that must be undertaken. 



For all his play of mind and fancy, for all his 

 indulgence — and, as time went on, he grew indul- 

 gent — Fleeming had views of duty that were even 

 stern. He was too shrewd a student of his fellow 

 men to remain long content with rigid formulae of 

 conduct. Iron-bound, impersonal ethics, the pro- 

 erustean bed of rules, he soon saw at their true 

 value as the deification of averages. ' As to Miss 

 (I declare I forget her name) being bad,' I find him 

 writing, ' people only mean that she has broken the 

 Decalogue — which is not at all the same thing. 

 People who have kept in the high road of Life 

 really have less opportunity for taking a com- 

 prehensive view of it than those who have leaped 

 over the hedges and strayed up the hills ; not but 

 what the hedges are very necessary, and our stray 



