I never met a man who was so different in his person from what you would expect after reading his books. To meet him at a dinner-party in London, to accompany him on a walking-tour, to play games with him, you would never guess that he had a care in the world. He seemed to enjoy life much in the same way as his great ancestor, the mystic, did. He was very devout, it is true, but his Christianity was of the optimistic Chestertonian sort, a kind of prizefighter's epicureanism, "Eat, drink, and be merry, but for the Lord's sake be careful not to get flabby." But suddenly, not so much in the holidays as in term time, some luckless creature would quite innocently introduce the topics of Socialism, Liberty, Religion, Morals, or Education, and at once Patrick would flush scarlet, stamp up and down his rooms and call down fire from Heaven on every existing institution. I never came across such an iconoclast. We who knew him understood that his frenzy was simply the burning ardour of the reformer who refuses to compromise: he was convinced that certain ideals were right and could not understand why the rest of mankind did not immediately forsake their old gods when he propagated his gospel of the new ones. Because he attempted to treat the boys with whom he came into contact as his intellectual equals, and never snubbed them, never punished or rewarded them, he expected every other master to employ the same methods. "Show 'em," he would say, "that they've jolly well got to work if they want to get anything out of life; tell 'em that if they work to please a master, to avoid the cane, to secure a trumpery prize, or for any other reason than that work is a good thing in itself, they are committing an immoral and indecent act, and then there's just a chance that the intellect may grow. Not one boy in five hundred even uses ten per cent. of his brain-cells: the average man or boy has no idea of what real work means." He kept a most valuable notebook in which he jotted down any views that commended themselves to him out of all the books on education that appeared. I loved Patrick more than any friend I have ever had. I am a poor counsel for the defence for that very reason. I am more likely to do harm to his cause than good by lauding him in this way: my duty is to let his diary tell its own tale. It is a document over which I would fain dwell at great length and explain to you, but that would only serve to show that I feared your verdict. I send it out to the world with much trepidation lest I should even now have so hacked and curtailed it that it fails to show Traherne in his true character, but I have this at least to comfort me. There will be but few of those who already belong to the noblest profession in the world or who are shortly to join it who will not derive help from the light it sheds on a most difficult task.