Stephen tells us how at Christmas time he would rejoice with Fawcett in an early and conversational breakfast; then discuss the newspaper until luncheon; the long afternoon tramp and talk would end just in time to prepare for dinner, and after dinner more smoking and argument until the wee hours of the next day. What a triumphant test of friendship and fluency! Much of the ability of Fawcett to entertain—and be entertained—from morning until past midnight was the result of his talent for accepting the small and trivial things of life as legitimate pabulum for talk. He would begin a morning’s conversation with, ‘What did you have for breakfast to-day?’ [Sidenote: Anecdotage.] He had a surprising avidity for anecdotes, and loved to hear certain lengthy ones repeated numberless times. He would listen, his attention glued to these worn tales, and would beg with an infantile eagerness to have some hoary story retold which he had heard over and over for a quarter of a century. His friend, the late Master of Jesus College, had a rare genius for mimicry of voice and gesture. Fawcett revelled in his performances; he would be on the _qui vive_ with the delight of anticipation, and ‘as the well-known anecdote proceeded every muscle of his body would quiver with enjoyment and he would end with laughter-choked petitions for more.’ Though Fawcett possessed a remarkably strong and rugged mind, his training reflected the limitations of the Cambridge curriculum of his day, in which the development of brain fibre by mental gymnastics and keen competition was the chief object. The undeniable charm which accompanies the type of mind which is attracted by mystery or the more subtle forms of the æsthetic was denied to Fawcett. Though his biographers may feel that he would have been more interesting if he had possessed these qualities, the frank acceptance of his limitations and the record of his achievement make a story of such heroism that it requires nothing more than what legitimately belongs to it. The short-sighted put him down as a Philistine, an epithet well described as that name which a prig bestows on the rest of the species; but between Fawcett and a prig there was a natural lack of harmony. He appreciated good work wherever he found it. The novels of George Eliot, the Brontës, or Jane Austen were a great delight to him. _Esmond_ and _Vanity Fair_ were read to him several times over, and he would ask for certain sonorous passages from Milton or Burke. [Sidenote: The British Association Meeting.]