gh to add here
that his relations with his colleagues in general were pleasant to
himself.

Edinburgh, then, with its society, its University work, its delightful
scenery and its skating in the winter, was thenceforth his base of
operations. But he shot meanwhile erratic in many directions: twice to
America, as we have seen, on telegraph voyages; continually to London on
business; often to Paris; year after year to the Highlands to shoot, to
fish, to learn reels and Gaelic, to make the acquaintance and fall in
love with the character of Highlanders; and once to Styria, to hunt
chamois and dance with peasant maidens. All the while he was pursuing
the course of his electrical studies, making fresh inventions, taking up
the phonograph, filled with theories of graphic representation; reading,
writing, publishing, founding sanitary associations, interested in
technical education, investigating the laws of metre, drawing, acting,
directing private theatricals, going a long way to see an actor--a long
way to see a picture; in the very bubble of the tideway of contemporary
interests. And all the while he was busied about his father and mother,
his wife, and in particular his sons; anxiously watching, anxiously
guiding these, and plunging with his whole fund of youthfulness into
their sports and interests. And all the while he was himself
maturing--not in character or body, for these remained young--but in the
stocked mind, in the tolerant knowledge of life and man, in pious
acceptance of the universe. Here is a farrago for a chapter; here is a
world of interests and activities, human, artistic, social, scientific,
at each of which he sprang with impetuous pleasure, on each of which he
squandered energy, the arrow drawn to the head, the whole intensity of
his spirit bent, for the moment, on the momentary purpose. It was this
that lent such unusual interest to his society, so that no friend of his
can forget that figure of Fleeming coming charged with some new
discovery: it is this that makes his character so difficult to
represent. Our fathers, upon some difficult theme, would invoke the
Muse; I can but appeal to the imagination of the reader. When I dwell
upon some one thing, he must bear in mind it was only one of a score;
that the unweariable brain was teeming at the very time with other
thoughts; that the good heart had left no kind duty forgotten.

I

In Edinburgh, for a considerable time, Fleeming's family, to three