ness and his early
stoicism made the art of unbending a little difficult. Under the new
conditions, however, he discovered the delightfulness of the relation
between a bright little child and a strong grown-up man--at any rate
when they are daughter and father. Henceforward he cultivated more
directly an affectionate intercourse with his children, which became a
great source of future happiness.

His correspondence, though active enough, did not occupy all his leisure
on the journey. Parting from home, he says in a letter written in the
train near Calcutta to his old friend Venables, was 'like cutting the
flesh off my bones'; and ten minutes after beginning his solitary
journey from Boulogne, he had sought distraction by beginning an article
in the train. This was neither his first nor his last performance of
that kind during the journey. He goes on to say that he had written
twenty articles for the 'Pall Mall Gazette' between the days of leaving
England and of landing at Bombay. 'With that and law I passed the time
very pleasantly, and kept at bay all manner of thoughts in which there
was no use in indulging myself.' To pour himself out in articles had
become a kind of natural instinct. It had the charm, if I may say so, of
a vice; it gave him the same pleasure that other men derive from
dramdrinking. 'If I were in solitary confinement,' he says, 'I should
have to scratch newspaper articles on the wall with a nail. My appetite,
natural or acquired, has become insatiable.' When he had entered upon
his duties at Calcutta he felt that there were objections to this
indulgence, and he succeeded in weaning himself after a time. For the
first three or four months he still yielded to the temptation of turning
out a few articles on the sly; but he telegraphs home to stop the
appearance of some that had been written, breaks off another in the
middle, and becomes absorbed in the official duties, which were of
themselves quite sufficient to satiate any but an inordinate appetite
for work.

Work, he says, is 'the very breath of my nostrils'; and he fell upon his
official work greedily, not so much in the spirit of a conscientious
labourer as with the rapture of a man who has at last obtained the
chance of giving full sway to his strongest desires. The task before him
surpassed his expectations. His functions, he says, are of more
importance than those discharged by the Lord Chancellor in England. He
compares himself to a schoolbo