an even franker pleasure in the deaths of his juniors. Then he had
one of his long-suffering daughters to write letters for him, and would
dictate long, ungrammatical sentences to her; but he would permit of no
erasures, and letter after letter would have to be torn up and
re-written. He made all the party walk with him before luncheon, and at
his pace, the same little walk every day. I think he mostly slept in
the afternoon, or read his banking book; his talk was almost wholly
about himself, his virtues, his astonishing health, his perspicacity;
and he used to lecture comparative strangers about their duties with
incredible insolence. The clergyman's life was made a burden to him,
and the doctor's as well. Though he was the most luxurious and
comfort-loving old wretch, his great text was the value of Spartan
discipline for everyone else. If any dish was not exactly to his mind,
he would allow no one to taste it, send it away, and complain bitterly
that even his simple wants could not be supplied. Even when he got more
infirm and took most of his food in seclusion, he ordered the meals for
the rest of the household; he could not bear to think of their having
anything to eat of which he did not himself approve. He used to make
everyone go to bed before him, and would even look into their rooms to
see that they were not reading in bed. It was all so virtuous and
sensible that it was impossible to argue with him, and I used to suffer
from an insane desire to pull his chair away from under him while he
sate lecturing the company about the way to attain old age. Here, too,
it was impossible to see the purpose with which the unhappy old man was
being encouraged by nature and destiny to this hideous and tyrannical
self-deception, this ruthless piling up of the materials for
disillusionment in a higher sphere. It seemed as if he were being by
his very vigour and virtue deliberately trained for ineradicable
conceit and complacency. If his relations came to see him, they were
lectured on their inefficiency; if they stayed away, they were
reproached for their want of natural affection. It seemed absolutely
impossible to bring any conception home to him, wrapped as he was in
armour of impenetrable self-satisfaction.

But the old friend of whom I spoke is entirely removed from either of
these shadows of age. He is infirm, but not ill; he is infinitely
courteous and gracious, grateful for the smallest kindness, determined
not to inte