cl MEMOIR 



luxuries, set forth pell-mell and pressed at random on the guests. 

 And here he must make a speech for himself and his wife, prais- 

 ing their destiny, their marriage, their son, their daughter-in- 

 law, their grandchildren, their manifold causes of gratitude : 

 surely the most innocent speech, the old, sharp contemner of 

 his innocence now watching him with eyes of admiration. Then 

 it was time for the guests to depart ; and they went aw T ay, bathed, 

 even to the youngest child, in tears of inseparable sorrow and 

 gladness, and leaving the golden bride and bridegroom to their 

 own society and that of the hired nurse. 



It was a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, 

 the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such 

 scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort, a 

 certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired ; or we 

 burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that 

 was being done ; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband 

 from too frequent visits ; but here was one of those clear-cut, 

 indubitable duties for which Fleeming lived, and he could not 

 pardon even the suggestion of neglect. 



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



John? 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 acquies- 

 cence 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 Fleem- 

 ing that train of tender and grateful thought, which was like 



