of her occupations by the banks of the
river; but in his other imaginations there was some kind of peg on
which to hang the false costumes he created; windmills are big, and
wave their arms like giants; sheep in the distance are somewhat like
an army; a little boat on the river-side must look much the same
whether enchanted or belonging to millers; but except that Dulcinea is
a woman, she bears no resemblance at all to the damsel of his
imagination."

At the time of these letters the oldest son only was born to them. In
September of the next year, with the birth of the second, Charles
Frewen, there befell Fleeming a terrible alarm, and what proved to be a
lifelong misfortune. Mrs. Jenkin was taken suddenly and alarmingly ill;
Fleeming ran a matter of two miles to fetch the doctor, and, drenched
with sweat as he was, returned with him at once in an open gig. On their
arrival at the house, Mrs. Jenkin half unconsciously took and kept hold
of her husband's hand. By the doctor's orders, windows and doors were
set open to create a thorough draught, and the patient was on no account
to be disturbed. Thus, then, did Fleeming pass the whole of that night,
crouching on the floor in the draught, and not daring to move lest he
should wake the sleeper. He had never been strong; energy had stood him
in stead of vigour; and the result of that night's exposure was flying
rheumatism varied with settled sciatica. Sometimes it quite disabled
him, sometimes it was less acute; but he was rarely free from it until
his death. I knew him for many years; for more than ten we were closely
intimate; I have lived with him for weeks; and during all this time he
only once referred to his infirmity, and then perforce, as an excuse for
some trouble he put me to, and so slightly worded that I paid no heed.
This is a good measure of his courage under sufferings of which none but
the untried will think lightly. And I think it worth noting how this
optimist was acquainted with pain. It will seem strange only to the
superficial. The disease of pessimism springs never from real troubles,
which it braces men to bear, which it delights men to bear well. Nor
does it readily spring at all, in minds that have conceived of life as
a field of ordered duties, not as a chase in which to hunt for
gratifications. "We are not here to be happy, but to be good"; I wish he
had mended the phrase: "We are not here to be happy, but to try to be
good," comes n