ACQUAINTANCE WITH A STUDENT 191 



for the imagination in these Hnes of a noble poem, 

 where we are told, that in our highest hours of 

 visionary clearness, we can but 



' see the children sport upon the shore. 

 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore/ 



To this clearness Fleeming had attained ; and 

 although he heard the voice of the eternal seas 

 and weighed its message, he was yet able, until 

 the end of his life, to sport upon these shores of 

 death and mystery with the gaiety and innocence 

 of children. 



IV 



It was as a student that I first knew Fleeming, Fieeming's 

 as one of that modest number of young men who ance wUh 

 sat under his ministrations in a soul-chilling class- ^ ^^" ^"'' 

 room at the top of the University buildings. His 

 presence was against him as a professor : no one, 

 least of all students, would have been moved 

 to respect him at first sight : rather short in 

 stature, markedly plain, boyishly young in manner, 

 cocking his head like a terrier with every mark of 

 the most engaging vivacity and readiness to be 

 pleased, full of words, full of paradox, a stranger 

 could scarcely fail to look at him twice, a man 

 thrown with him in a train could scarcely fail to 

 be engaged by him in talk, but a student would 

 never regard him as academical. Yet he had 

 that fibre in him that order always existed in his 



