lled on for a public speech, and
for several days he would be busy at his desk. Frequently he presided at
dinners and would tell a story and sing a song, for he had a fine bass
voice and was famous for his singing.

He read much in those last years in science. When he was not reading
Trowbridge to his grandchildren, it was Huxley to himself. But when his
eyes grew tired, he would on an occasion--if there was canning in the
house--go into the kitchen where my mother and grandmother worked, and help
pare the fruit. Seriously, as though he were engaged upon a game, he would
cut the skin into thinnest strips, unbroken to the end, and would hold up
the coil for us to see. Or if he broke it in the cutting it was a point
against him in the contest.

His diversion rather than his profit was the care and rental of about
twenty small houses, some of which he built to fit his pensioners. My
brother and myself often made the rounds with him in the phaeton. At most
of the houses he was affectionately greeted as "Jedge" and was held in long
conversations across the fence. And to see an Irishman was to see a friend.
They all knew him and said, "Good mornin'," as we passed. He and they were
good Democrats together.

I can see in memory a certain old Irishman in a red flannel shirt, with his
foot upon the hub, bending across the wheel and gesticulating in an endless
discussion of politics or crops, while my brother and I were impatient to
be off. Dolly was of course patient, for she had long since passed her
fretful youth. If by any biological chance it had happened that she had
been an old lady instead of a horse, she would have been the kind that
spent her day in a rocker with her knitting. Any one who gave Dolly an
excuse for standing was her friend. There she stood as though she wished
the colloquy to last forever.

It was seldom that Dolly lost her restraint. She would, indeed, when she
came near the stable, somewhat hasten her stride; and when we came on our
drives to the turning point and at last headed about for home, Dolly would
know it and show her knowledge by a quickening of the ears and the quiver
of a faint excitement. Yet Dolly lost her patience when there were flies.
Then she threw off all repression and so waved her tail that she regularly
got it across the reins. This stirred my grandfather to something not
far short of anger. How vigorously would he try to dislodge the reins
by pulling and jerking! Dolly only clamp