Hardly any social measure could be brought to his attention with which he did not feel a certain meed of sympathy. If, for instance, somebody proposed a scheme of Old-Age Pensions, he would give a careful nod, and wait, because he knew that when somebody got up and said that this was dangerous, he should agree with him; or, again, if it were suggested that children should be made less hungry out of the public rates, he approved, but not too much, because he felt that to approve too much would interfere with his approval of the plan that they should not be fed out of the public rates. “A little bit of both,” would be his thought, and by this masterly decision, which was often called his commonsense, he infallibly secured possession to the children of a little bit of neither; but, as he very justly said, to grant the first was too progressive; to grant the second, retrograde. And so with every other measure. His leaders on both sides had learned from long experience the daintiness of his digestion; how very sensitive it was to motion; how, if jolted, it revolted; and so they did not try too hard to jolt it now, for they naturally hated to be cast into the air. They appreciated, too, his sterling worth--without him they felt the country would improve too fast. And those leaders of his would look at him. With his eyelids lowered, but his eyes a little anxious, with his lips pinched in, and yet half-smiling, in an overcoat of medium weight, put on or taken off according to the weather, he sat, not very often opening his mouth. Behind his grey and unobtrusive figure they saw the masses of grey, unobtrusive, careful men, and a little shiver would run down their spines. Too often had they awakened from their dreams and seen him sitting there, under a tall grey tower with a clock that faced all ways, bench upon bench, row after row, by day, by night, one eye of him on one side, and one eye on the other, and his nose between them in the middle. FEAR V FEAR I saw him first on a spring day--one of those days when the limbs are lazy with delicious tiredness, the air soft and warm against the face, the heart full of a queer longing to know the hearts of other men.