226 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



good, the approaches to it are terrible,' he had 

 written in the beginning of his mother's illness : 

 he thought so no more, when he had laid father 

 and mother side by side at Stowting. He had 

 always loved life ; in the brief time that now 

 remained to him, he seemed to be half in love 

 with death. ' Grief is no duty,' he wrote to Miss 

 Bell ; ' it was all too beautiful for grief,' he said 

 to me ; but the emotion, call it by what name 

 we please, shook him to his depths, his wife thought 

 he would have broken his heart when he must 

 demolish the Captain's trophy in the dining-room, 

 and he seemed thenceforth scarcely the same 

 man. 

 Telpher- Thcsc last ycars were indeed years of an exces- 



age. 



sive demand upon his vitality; he was not only 

 worn out with sorrow, he was worn out by hope. 

 The singular invention to which he gave the name 

 of telpherage had of late consumed his time, 

 overtaxed his strength and overheated his imagina- 

 tion. The words in which he first mentioned his 

 discovery to me — ' I am simply Alnaschar ' — were 

 not only descriptive of his state of mind, they 

 were in a sense prophetic ; since whatever fortune 

 may await his idea in the future, it was not his 

 to see it bring forth fruit. Alnaschar he was 

 indeed ; beholding about him a world all changed, 

 a world filled with telpherage wires ; and seeing 

 not only himself and family but all his friends 



