le 'talent of silence'! '"_Deus,
Deus_," said the Lord Abbot to me once, when he heard the Convent were
murmuring at some act of his, "I have much need to remember that Dream
they had of me, that I was to rage among them like a wolf. Above all
earthly things I dread their driving me to do it. How much do I hold
in, and wink at; raging and shuddering in my own secret mind, and not
outwardly at all!" He would boast to me at other times: "This and that
I have seen, this and that I have heard; yet patiently stood it." He
had this way, too, which I have never seen in any other man, that he
affectionately loved many persons to whom he never or hardly ever
showed a countenance of love. Once on my venturing to expostulate with
him on the subject, he reminded me of Solomon: "Many sons I have; it
is not fit that I should smile on them." He would suffer faults,
damage from his servants, and know what he suffered, and not speak of
it; but I think the reason was, he waited a good time for speaking of
it, and in a wise way amending it. He intimated, openly in chapter to
us all, that he would have no eavesdropping: "Let none," said he,
"come to me secretly accusing another, unless he will publicly stand
to the same; if he come otherwise, I will openly proclaim the name of
him. I wish, too, that every Monk of you have free access to me, to
speak of your needs or grievances when you will."

The kinds of people Abbot Samson liked worst were these three:
'_Mendaces_, _ebriosi_, _verbosi_, Liars, drunkards and wordy or windy
persons;'--not good kinds, any of them! He also much condemned
'persons given to murmur at their meat or drink, especially Monks of
that disposition.' We remark, from the very first, his strict anxious
order to his servants to provide handsomely for hospitality, to guard
'above all things that there be no shabbiness in the matter of meat
and drink; no look of mean parsimony, _in novitate mea_, at the
beginning of my Abbotship;' and to the last he maintains a due
opulence of table and equipment for others; but he is himself in the
highest degree indifferent to all such things.

'Sweet milk, honey and other naturally sweet kinds of food, were what
he preferred to eat: but he had this virtue,' says Jocelin, 'he never
changed the dish (_ferculum_) you set before him, be what it might.
Once when I, still a novice, happened to be waiting table in the
refectory, it came into my head' (rogue that I was!) 'to try if this
were