f
science he had a devoted interest. In literary matters I seldom heard
his equal. Many and many is the book which I have been induced to
read solely by hearing him sketch the purport in little sentences of
extraordinary felicity. "The birth and fatal effects of Impulse in a
prosaic soul," was a sketch he gave of a celebrated novel. On one
subject he was always dumb--Economics. "It is the one subject on
which I have never hazarded a remark successfully," he said to me
once. "I can never appreciate the value of an economic statement;
I hardly know whether it is interesting."

As he never talked for talking's sake, he was always ready to give
his whole attention to the person he was talking to, or none at all;
and consequently he never had a middle reputation--some praising
his courtesy, as an old lady with whose querulous complaints about
ingratitude and rheumatism he had borne and sympathized; others, his
abrupt atrocious manner--"Turned his back on me with a scowl, and
didn't say another word," as a sporting fast married lady said to me,
who had attempted to tell him an improper story. "I didn't mean to
offend him; young men generally like it. I hate a young man to be a
prude and a Puritan. Why, he isn't even going into the church, I
understand!"

One of his colleagues in the school where he was a master, told me
that Arthur had once given him a most delicate and pointed rebuke on
the practice into which he had fallen, of appealing to a boy's home
feelings before the class.

"Some things ought to be said to people when they are alone; besides,
we must not _seethe the kid in his mother's milk_."

The same man told me that he heard him give a little address to the
boys in his class, on the two main virtues of a schoolboy--purity and
honesty--on the words, "And they said, Lord, behold, here are two
swords; and he said unto them, It is enough."

Those are the only two anecdotes I have heard of his professional
life, both illustrating that extraordinary gift of apt quotation and
seeing unexpected connections, which, to my mind, is as adequate an
external symbol of genius as can be found, though sometimes illusory.

He took the greatest delight in the society of children. He writes--

"What wonderful lines those are of Tennyson's"--they had just come
out,--"'Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness Which often
lured her from herself!' There is nothing more absolutely refreshing
when one is overdone or anxious, o