THE END 303 



But after that one begins to feel the responsibility of a father 

 and the interest grows. We have got to the story stage now 

 and the constant and never-ceasing demand is, " Tell me what 

 you did when you were a little boy." And no amount of anecdote 

 satisfies that craving, so I sometimes desert the sure path of 

 truth and wander in the romantic groves of fiction. But it is 

 a dangerous process, for the verbal memory of youth is wonderful 

 and if one tells the story with the slightest variation the youthful 

 mind refuses to accept the innovation and insists on the same 

 facts being told in the same words ; and when these same facts 

 are fiction it is a little difficult to do so." 



He and his wife had long established a reputation 

 for hospitality, and when he retired from the Chair at 

 University College they hoped to gather friends about 

 them in the pleasant country home at Hazlemere in Bucks, 

 to which they had so recently removed. This, however, 

 was not to be, but even in the misfortune which over- 

 took him and ended his life in months of physical misery, 

 the survivors may try to extract consolation from the 

 thought that he was spared the years of " slow con- 

 suming age," the weary watching of declining powers 

 which are the lot of many for whom the " fell sergeant " 

 is less swift in his arrest. 



Dr. Johnson, who had ready-made views on every 

 subject, is said to have maintained that, in writing a 

 Life and not merely a Panegyric, an intimate friend 

 should endeavour to represent it as it really was and 

 should mention faults. In the present case it is not 

 easy to comply with this precept, not because the 

 subject of the memoir had no faults, for to say so 



