134 FRANCIS ORPEN MORRIS 



and Frederick. Neither would he, under any cir- 

 cumstances, shorten a place-name ; Scarborough, 

 for instance, would never be written Scarbro', nor 

 Yorkshire, Yorks. Nor would he ever omit to 

 cross a " t," dot an " i," or make a needed comma ; 

 while such mutilations as "exam" for examination 

 or " photo " for photograph he could, under no 

 circumstances, put up with, even in others. It may 

 seem to some hardly worth mentioning these trifles, 

 but as straws show the course of the wind, so are 

 these minute details highly characteristic of his 

 ways. He was always for doing whatever he did 

 thoroughly ; no half-measures satisfied him. In 

 times of pressure he must have been tempted, one 

 would suppose, to adopt ordinary abbreviations in 

 writing ; but if he were so, he never appears to have 

 given way to the temptation. 



The even flow of his periods was sometimes 

 needlessly broken by reason of an inordinate fond- 

 ness for excessive punctuation, especially in the 

 matter of commas. Phrases and sentences which 

 were in themselves perfectly plain and simple 

 would now and again be studded over with a 

 number of superfluous commas that rather irritated 

 than assisted the reader ; on this subject the writer 

 of these pages has had many a diverting discussion 

 with him, but he always stuck to his commas I 

 had almost said his "point." 



