m Engine tag--the rarest of them
all--and a common Climax, but we forgave him as one forgives a friend who
is ignorant of Persian pottery. He employed us as gardeners and put a
bounty on weeds. We watered the lawn together, turn by turn. When I was
no more than four years old, he taught us to play casino with him--and
afterwards bezique. How he cried out if he got a royal sequence! With what
excitement he announced a double bezique! Or if one of us seemed about to
score and lacked but a single card, how intently he contended for the last
few tricks to thwart our declaration! And if we got it despite his lead
of aces, how gravely he squinted on the cards against deception, with his
glasses forward on his nose!

When he took his afternoon nap and lay upon his back on the sofa in the
sitting-room, we made paper pin-wheels to see whether his breath would
stir them. This trick having come to his notice by a sudden awakening, he
sometimes thereafter played to be asleep and snored in such a mighty gust
that the wheels spun. He was like a Dutch tempest against a windmill.

If a Dime Museum came to town we made an afternoon of it. He took us to all
the circuses and gave us our choice of side-shows. We walked up and
down before the stretches of painted canvas, balancing in our desire a
sword-swallower against an Indian Princess. Most of the fat women and all
the dwarfs that I have known came to my acquaintance when in company with
my grandfather. As a young man, it was said, he once ran away from home to
join a circus as an acrobat, having acquired the trick of leaping upon a
running horse. I fancy that his knack of throwing us to his shoulder by a
double somersault was a recollection of his early days. You may imagine
with what awe we looked on him even though he now went on crutches. He was
the epitome of adventure, the very salt of excitement. It was better having
him than a pirate in the house. When the circus had gone and life was drab,
he was our tutor in the art of turning cart-wheels and making hand-stands
against the door.

And once, when we were away from him, he walked all morning about the
garden and in his loneliness he gathered into piles the pebbles that we had
dropped.

I was too young to know my grandfather in his active days when he was
prominent in public matters. His broader abilities are known to others. But
though more than twenty years have passed since his death, I remember his
tone of voice, his walk,