and broad. A hint of vagary, and just a hint in the
expression, is qualified by the eyes, which are set rather far apart from
each other as seems, and with a most wistful, and at the same time
possibly a merry impish expression arising over that, yet frank and
clear, piercing, but at the same time steady, and fall on you with a
gentle radiance and animation as he speaks. Romance, if with an
indescribable _soupcon_ of whimsicality, is marked upon him; sometimes he
has the look as of the Ancient Mariner, and could fix you with his
glittering e'e, and he would, as he points his sentences with a movement
of his thin white forefinger, when this is not monopolised with the
almost incessant cigarette. There is a faint suggestion of a
hair-brained sentimental trace on his countenance, but controlled, after
all, by good Scotch sense and shrewdness. In conversation he is very
animated, and likes to ask questions. A favourite and characteristic
attitude with him was to put his foot on a chair or stool and rest his
elbow on his knee, with his chin on his hand; or to sit, or rather to
half sit, half lean, on the corner of a table or desk, one of his legs
swinging freely, and when anything that tickled him was said he would
laugh in the heartiest manner, even at the risk of bringing on his cough,
which at that time was troublesome. Often when he got animated he rose
and walked about as he spoke, as if movement aided thought and
expression. Though he loved Edinburgh, which was full of associations
for him, he had no good word for its east winds, which to him were as
death. Yet he passed one winter as a "Silverado squatter," the story of
which he has inimitably told in the volume titled _The Silverado
Squatters_; and he afterwards spent several winters at Davos Platz,
where, as he said to me, he not only breathed good air, but learned to
know with closest intimacy John Addington Symonds, who "though his books
were good, was far finer and more interesting than any of his books." He
needed a good deal of nursery attentions, but his invalidism was never
obtrusively brought before one in any sympathy-seeking way by himself; on
the contrary, a very manly, self-sustaining spirit was evident; and the
amount of work which he managed to turn out even when at his worst was
truly surprising.

His wife, an American lady, is highly cultured, and is herself an author.
In her speech there is just the slightest suggestion of the American
acc