MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 9 



in large rooms, and they shuffled, fidgeted and turned 

 this way and that in the search for ideas. They did 

 not always find ideas themselves, but they effectually 

 scattered those of the solitary student. Neither by 

 word nor by tone did Kees suggest a complaint. I am 

 confident that he never challenged the justice of the 

 judgment which ranked him for a time among the least 

 competent of his fellow-students ; and he never shirked 

 a task which must have been odious to him, as a weaker 

 man might have done. His good sense showed him 

 that if he was to end his College career with credit he 

 must learn to write under the conditions which he then 

 found so distracting. He had his reward. Very soon 

 he mastered his difficulties, and long before the end of 

 his period of residence he was decidedly the best essayist 

 in College. The calm acquiescence with which he 

 accepted the conditions under which he had to work 

 was characteristic of the man as I knew him. In the 

 same spftit he faced all his difficulties, and he conquered 

 them with equal completeness. In his final examination 

 his work was pronounced by the examiners to be the 

 best they had seen. He had in the meantime taught 

 his fellow-students to be proud of him ; at least he had 

 taught the more generous of them, for there were a few 

 who were petty enough to feel their own dignity dimin- 

 ished by his superiority. He had also shown that he 

 was scarcely less a master of the art of speaking than 

 of that of writing. Feeling that the time was brief and 

 that for a man whose education had been irregular 

 there was much to do, he seldom allowed himself to go 

 outside the curriculum ; but once he gave to one of the 



