My wife acknowledged that she had been waiting to give the great man afternoon tea in fear and trembling, but there was something about him so winsome that she did not need even to study my face, but felt at once that however trying writing-women and dilletante critics might be, one could be at home with a chief scholar. When I described the guests who were coming--to meet him at dinner--such eminent persons as I could gather--he was overcome by the trouble we had taken, but also alarmed lest he should be hardly fit for their company, being, as he explained himself, a man much restricted in knowledge through the just burden of professional studies. And before he went to his room to dress he had struck up an acquaintance with the youngest member of the family, who seemed to have forgotten that our guest was a very great man, and had visited a family of Japanese mice with evident satisfaction. During dinner he was so conscious of his poverty of attainment in the presence of so many distinguished people that he would say very little, but listened greedily to everything that fell from the lips of a young Oxford man who had taken a fair degree and was omniscient. After dinner we wiled him into a field where very few men have gone, and where he was supposed to know everything that could be known, and then being once started he spoke for forty minutes to our huge delight with such fulness and accuracy of knowledge, with such lucidity and purity of speech--allowing for the old-fashioned style--that even the Oxford man was silent and admired. Once and again he stopped to qualify his statement of some other scholar's position lest he should have done him injustice, and in the end he became suddenly conscious of the time he had spoken and implored every one's pardon, seeing, as he explained “that the gentlemen present will likely have far more intimate knowledge of this subject than I can ever hope to attain.” He then asked whether any person present had ever seen a family of Japanese mice, and especially whether they had ever seen them waltzing, or as he described it “performing their circular motions of the most graceful and intricate nature, with almost incredible continuance.” And when no one had, he insisted on the company going to visit the menagerie, which was conduct not unbecoming a gentleman, but very unbecoming a scholar.