CLOSING YEARS. 435 



There is something expressive in the "words, " Little Ways." 

 Every one has seen, in intimate intercourse with his fellow- creatures, 

 habits and peculiarities that are in themselves trilling enough, but 

 so belonging to the person that they can be looked upon only as his 

 " ways," and are never for an instant disputed, rather encouraged. 

 My father had a number of these " ways," all of so playful a kind, 

 60 much proceeding from the affection of his nature, that I can 

 scarcely think of him without them, coming, as they do, out of the 

 heart of his domesticities, when moving about his house, preparing 

 for the forenoon lecture, or sitting simply at home after the labor of 

 the day. I would not as a matter of taste introduce an ordinary 

 toilette to the attention of the reader, but with the Professor this 

 business was so like himself, so original, that some account of it 

 will rather amuse than offend. By fits and starts the process of 

 shaving was carried on ; walking out of his dressing-room into the 

 study ; lathering his chin one moment with soap, then standing the 

 next to take a look at some fragment of a lecture, which would ab- 

 sorb his attention, until the fact of being without coat, and having 

 his face half-covered with soap, was entirely forgotten, the reverie 

 only disturbed by a ring at the bell, when he would withdraw to 

 proceed with the " toilette's tedious task," which, before conrpletion, 

 would be interrupted by various caprices, such as walking out of 

 one room into another ; then his waistcoat was put on ; after that, 

 perhaps, he had a hunt among old letters and papers for the lecture, 

 now lost, which a minute before he held in his hand. Off again to 

 his dressing-room, bringing his coat along with him, and, diving 

 into its pockets, he would find the lost lecture, in the form of the 

 tattered fragment of a letter, which, to keep together, he was 

 obliged to ask his daughter to sew for him with needle and thread, 

 an operation requiring considerable skill, the age of the paper having 

 reduced the once shining Bath post to a species of crumbling wool, 

 not willing to be transfixed or held in order by such an arrangement 

 as that of needlework. At last, he would get under weigh ; but the 

 tying of his shoes and the winding-up of his watch were the finish- 

 ing touches to this disjointed toilette. These little operations he 

 never, as far as I remember, did for himself ; they were offices I 

 often had the pleasure of performing. The watch was a great joke. 

 In the first place, he seldom wore his own, which never by any 

 chance was right, or treated according to the natural properties of 



