began to think for myself I walked in the footsteps of my school-master. With my uncle lived three old ladies, his mother who died when ninety three, and her two sisters who lived to be over eighty. After the death of these old people he continued to live alone in Sandymount and hoped to die, as they did, in the odours of a well approved and well-tested worldliness, but fickle and cruel fortune ruled otherwise. He lost his money. How it went I don't know, I don't believe he himself knew, and when he died an old man broken by creeping paralysis, there were some debts whereof his assets sufficed to pay fifteen shillings in the pound, his assets consisting of a collection of pictures, china and silver, very valuable had Dublin only known it. A sort of incrustation of legend had gathered about my uncle. One was that he was an old Peninsular officer who had seen battles and sieges. As a fact, his nearest approach to actual war was that, when quartered in Hastings, he had had living with him a prisoner of war, a French officer. Very pleasantly they lived together, going to a great many parties and picnics, neither knowing the other's language, so there was no possibility of disputes. Of that friendship the only trace remaining was that my uncle always pronounced the word 'presentiment' with a French accent. Perhaps in the councils of the Eternal, or whatever you call the Providence who shapes our ends, no time is lost and nothing whatever wasted. Looking back on my uncle's long and pleasant life, ending in a close so sombre, I will pass no judgement on the ways of Providence, beyond saying that he was by nature a good man and deserved to be happy to the end. He was fond of his friends, and wished to be only good to them, and with his money he benefited hundreds. There are people who if they do anything for you do thereby fix a hook in your jaws which you can never get rid of. I think when he did you a kindness he forgot about it and wished you to forget it. Of course his sympathies were extremely narrow and did not extend beyond his relations and friends. Humanitarism, which I had learned from Mill's philosophy, I would not have dared speak of in his presence. Theory was my uncle's aversion; an old Tory, he regarded theory as the Enemy. He was extraordinarily fond of children. When we lived in the North of Ireland, his advent among us was a radiant event. I can remember that one late winter's evening, when with my mother and father he had just left for the mail coach that was to take him to Dublin, out of pure affection and loneliness I went over to the table and drank out of his tea-cup.