190 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



the house, but he was made the subject of experi- 

 ment. The visitors, I am afraid, took their parts 

 Hghtly : Mr. Hole and I, with unscientific laughter, 

 commemorating various shades of Scotch accent, 

 or proposing to ' teach the poor dumb animal to 

 swear.' But Fleeming and Mr. Ewing, when we 

 butterflies were gone, were laboriously ardent. 

 Many thoughts that occupied the later years of 

 my friend were caught from the small utterance 

 of that toy. Thence came his inquiries into the 

 roots of articulate language and the foundations 

 of literary art ; his papers on vowel sounds, his 

 papers in the Saturday Review upon the laws 

 of verse, and many a strange approximation, 

 many a just note, thrown out in talk and now 

 forgotten. I pass over dozens of his interests, 

 and dwell on this trifling matter of the phono- 

 graph, because it seems to me that it depicts the 

 man. So, for Fleeming, one thing joined into 

 another, the greater with the less. He cared not 

 where it was he scratched the surface of the 

 ultimate mystery — ^in the child's toy, in the great 

 tragedy, in the laws of the tempest, or in the 

 properties of energy or mass — certain that what- 

 ever he touched, it was a part of life — and however 

 he touched it, there would flow for his happy 

 constitution interest and delight. ' All fables 

 have their morals,' says Thoreau, ' but the innocent 

 enjoy the story.' There is a truth represented 



