318 mings ot tbe Ibunting^jftelO 



quantity of work he turned out was much greater and 

 more varied than ' Nimrod's.' His industry was extra- 

 ordinary, He appeared to be never happy unless he 

 was working; he would write at the theatre, in the train, 

 on a dogcart, regardless of all that was going on around 

 him. On one occasion, whilst scribbling away in a 

 railway carriage, he was shunted into a siding, but he 

 was so engrossed in his writing that he never noticed 

 the fact, till a porter happened to look into the carriage 

 and informed him that the train in which he should have 

 been travelling had sped away without him an hour ago. 

 He was utterly indifferent to meals, and often could 

 not remember whether he had dined or not. Indeed, his 

 absent-mindedness became so pronounced in his later 

 days as to be a severe trial to the patience of his friends, 

 for he could not sustain a connected conversation for five 

 minutes without falling into one of these fits of abstrac- 

 tion. The following anecdote is but one of many told 

 of his absence of mind. He was once being shown over 

 an old church by the Rector, when the latter noticed a 

 curious trail of black liquid soiling the recently washed 

 and spotless mosaic pavement of the chancel. The 

 vexed and angry incumbent could not make out whence 

 the defiling stream came, and ' The Druid ' was equally 

 puzzled, till suddenly a great black blob dropped close to 

 ' The Druid's ' feet. * Why ! ' exclaimed the Rector, ' it's 

 coming from your pocket ! ' And so it was. ' The 

 Druid ' had unwittingly thrust a bottle of ink, uncorked, 

 into his coat pocket and had been leaving a trail of the 

 dark fluid in his wake. His eccentricities were often a 

 source of anxiety to his family; as, for example, when he 

 entered church in a pair of tattered old carpet slippers 

 with a plaid shawl round his shoulders, or, again, when he 



