"THE PLEASURES OF LIFE" 241 



a necessary condition to the acquirement of a 

 taste for the arts, and less still would he be able 

 to find time for the acquirement of the art of 

 leisure itself. 



Working without haste and without rest, his 

 mind was ever thoughtful, never inclined to day- 

 dream. If he permitted himself — if, we may 

 say indeed, he knew — the joy of reverie, it was 

 always reverie deliberately directed, aimed at a 

 preconceived target — therefore, maybe, better to 

 be called by some different name. I have men- 

 tioned before that one of his sons told me that 

 when he was taking the young fellow for the first 

 time into the City, to introduce him to the busi- 

 ness, he said, " I have always found it a good plan 

 to have a book in my pocket with me, to read at 

 odd moments. It is wonderful how much you 

 can get through in that way " ; and accordingly, 

 in the turmoil of the " Tube," he drew forth a 

 book from his pocket and began reading it with 

 a concentration which enabled him perfectly to 

 detach his mind from the bustle and noise about 

 him. 



So, too, when his children, and, later, his 

 grandchildren, were in the room and playing 

 games of the most uproarious kind, he would be 

 peacefully absorbed, it may be, in a German 

 geological treatise, far remote from them all, in 

 an atmosphere of his own making. 



I shall not, I hope, be misunderstood when I 

 write that I am in a sense glad to be compelled, 

 for truth's sake, to modify the eulogy which 

 would suggest that he took all knowledge for his 

 province. His intellectual province was indeed 



VOL. I R 



