222 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



and he could not pardon even the suggestion of 

 neglect. 



Death of And now, after death had so long visibly but 

 John. still innocuously hovered above the family, it 

 began at last to strike and its blows fell thick 

 and heavy. The first to go was uncle John 

 Jenkin, taken at last from his Mexican dwelling 

 and the lost tribes of Israel ; and nothing in this 

 remarkable old gentleman's life, became him like 

 the leaving of it. His sterling, jovial acquiescence 

 in man's destiny was a delight to Fleeming. * My 

 visit to Stowting has been a very strange but not 

 at all a painful one,' he wrote. * In case you 

 ever wish to make a person die as he ought to 

 die in a novel,' he said to me, * I must tell you 

 all about my old uncle.' He was to see a nearer 

 instance before long ; for this family of Jenkin, 

 if they were not very aptly fitted to live, had 

 the art of manly dying. Uncle John was but 

 an outsider after all ; he had dropped out of hail 

 of his nephew's way of life and station in society, 

 and was more like some shrewd, old, humble 

 friend who should have kept a lodge ; yet he 

 led the procession of becoming deaths, and began 

 in the mind of Fleeming that train of tender and 

 grateful thought, which was like a preparation for 

 his own. Already I find him writing in the plural 

 of * these impending deaths ' ; already I find 

 him in quest of consolation. ' There is little 



