86 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



our touchstone, trials overcome our reward ; and 

 it was given to Fleeming to conquer. It was given 

 to him to Hve for another, not as a task, but till 

 the end as an enchanting pleasure. * People may- 

 write novels,' he wrote in 1869, ' and other people 

 may write poems, but not a man or woman among 

 them can write to say how happy a man may be, 

 who is desperately in love with his wife after ten 

 years of marriage.' And again in 1885, after more 

 than twenty-six years of marriage, and within but 

 five weeks of his death : ' Your first letter from 

 Bournemouth,' he wrote, ' gives me heavenly plea- 

 sure — ^for which I thank Heaven and you too — 

 who are my heaven on earth.' The mind hesitates 

 whether to say that such a man has been more 

 good or more fortunate. 



Any woman (it is the defect of her sex) comes 

 sooner to the stable mind of maturity than any 

 man ; and Jenkin was to the end of a most deliber- 

 ate growth. In the next chapter, when I come to 

 deal with his telegraphic voyages and give some 

 taste of his correspondence, the reader will still 

 find him at twenty-five an arrant schoolboy. His 

 wife besides was more thoroughly educated than 

 he. In many ways she was able to teach him, and 

 he proud to be taught ; in many ways she outshone 

 him, and he delighted to be outshone. All these 

 superiorities, and others that, after the manner of 

 lovers, he no doubt forged for himself, added as 



