But to the outer world he was perhaps best known as a conversationalist; he had the kind of reputation upon which stories are fathered. Men who knew the oracular background from which Dr. Thompson's utterances proceeded, who knew the inimitable air, the droop of the eyelids, the inscrutable coldness of the eyes and lips, the poise of the head, were ready to give a fictitious value to sayings that had the sanction of his name. To couple his name, falsely or truly, with an epigram gave it an indefinable prestige; his personality thrown into the scale made a sarcasm that might have passed unnoticed into a crushing hit. Those of his epigrams that survive (and there are a considerable number of a first-rate order) will appeal, it must be confessed, chiefly to those whose humour is of the caustic and derisive order. When he said, for instance, on hearing that the numbers of a rival college were diminishing, that he had heard that emigration was increasing among the lower classes, or that he had never realised what was the full force of the expression in the bidding prayer, "the inferior clergy," till he saw the minor canons of a northern cathedral--the fancy, though irresistibly tickled by the collocation, will on reflection recognise the cruelty of the expressions. And yet those who knew him best concur in saying that the Master was an intrinsically _kind_ man; so promptly generous indeed that in the days when he was a college tutor, undergraduates in trouble went naturally to him for help and advice--a most weighty proof to those who know the undergraduate world and its reticence. The explanation is that these sayings were uttered solely with reference to the amusement of those who heard them, with no ulterior idea: he had no wish that the venom of these stings should circulate and rankle--least of all that they should penetrate to those who formed the subjects of them. But he could not resist an epigram--when, for instance, on accompanying a popular preacher who was to preach at St. Mary's, he found that they were so hampered by the crowd at the door as to be almost unable to force an entrance--his suave utterance, "Make way, gentlemen, or some of us will be disappointed," was genuinely uttered, because the thought had occurred to him, and he was convinced that it would amuse the throng, and with no sort of wish to harrow the feelings or dash the satisfaction of the divine at his side.