FAREWELL TO CLAY GATE Ixxiii 



but the untried will think lightly. And I think it worth noting 

 how this optimist was acquainted with pain. It will seem 

 strange only to the superficial. The disease of pessimism springs 

 never from real troubles, which it braces men to bear, which it 

 delights men to bear well. Nor does it readily spring at all, in 

 minds that have conceived of life as a field of ordered duties, 

 not as a chase in which to hunt for gratifications. ' We are not 

 here to be happy but to be good ' ; I wish he had mended the 

 phrase : { We are not here to be happy, but to try to be good/ 

 comes nearer the modesty of truth. With such old-fashioned 

 morality, it is possible to get through life, and see the worst of it, 

 and feel some of the worst of it, and still acquiesce piously and 

 even gladly in man's fate. Feel some of the worst of it, I say ; 

 for some of the rest of the worst is, by this simple faith, excluded. 



It was in the year 1868, that the clouds finally rose. The Hi . s a P- 

 business in partnership with Mr. Forde began suddenly to pay to the 



well ; about the same time the patents showed themselves a 

 valuable property ; and but a little after, Fleeming was appointed burgh. 

 to the new chair of engineering in the University of Edinburgh. 

 Thus, almost at once, pecuniary embarrassments passed for ever 

 out of his life. Here is his own epilogue to the time at Clay- 

 gate, and his anticipations of the future in Edinburgh. 



' . . . The dear old house at Claygate is not let and the 

 pretty garden a mass of weeds. I feel rather as -if we had 

 behaved unkindly to them. We were very happy there, but 

 now that it is over I am conscious of the weight of anxiety as 

 to money which I bore all the time. With you in the garden, 

 with Austin in the coach-house, with pretty songs in the little 

 low white room, with the moonlight in the dear room upstairs, 

 ah, it was perfect ; but the long walk, wondering, pondering, 

 fearing, scheming, and the dusty jolting railway, and the horrid 

 fusty office with its endless disappointments, they are well gone. 

 It is well enough to fight and scheme and bustle about in the 

 eager crowd here [in London] for a while now and then, but not 

 for a lifetime. What I have now is just perfect. Study for 

 winter, action for summer, lovely country for recreation, a plea- 

 sant town for talk. 



