When scarcely recovered from a serious attack, Joe told me one morning of a dream that he had had, which--as Mr. W. J. Locke has remarked--contained such a “lightning flash of characterization” that it is hard to believe it came to him in sleep. “I dreamed,” he said, “that Squire Bancroft brought me some grapes,” and as he removed the paper from the basket he said, “White, Joe; when the case is serious I never bring black.” All through his illness, when increasing weakness and the inconveniences arising from the Great War forced him to an uncongenial life at sea-side resorts, his wit still bubbled up unbidden, as the following letter testifies. The boarding-house in which it was written did not afford exactly sympathetic society, yet on the Christmas Day that we spent there he offered to give the company a little “talk” if they cared to listen; and from his armchair, he chatted for half an hour to a crowded lounge on the eminent men whom he had known, interspersed with many a flash of fun appropriate to the hour and received with bursts of laughter by the simple circle. “ ... We are comfortable enough here,” he wrote to his daughter, “and there is entertainment furnished by some of the types, both in their physique and in their intellectual equipment. Some of the older females are designed and constructed with “dangerous salients in their lines,” everything occurring in unexpected places, and only dimly suggesting the original purpose of the Creator. One or two are of stupendous girth with hollows and protuberances that suggest some primeval landscape subjected to volcanic action.” Thus with the same humorous and kindly eye on the world as when he had been the welcome entertainer of a more brilliant society, he lightened the days--very heavy to him--of national anxiety, and with a contentment rather wonderful in the typical Londoner, alternated the few possible hours of patient literary labour with a cheerful delight in the beauties of the place. “I wonder if the present difficulty in getting out of England will make us appreciate it better,” he said as we stood one evening on the pier looking towards old Hastings. “If we were abroad we should say that medieval castle against the sunset was a wondrous fine sight.” So did he still exemplify his life-long belief often expressed in the words: “How can people be dull when they’re alive?” CHAPTER V JOURNALISM AND LETTERS My husband has given some account of his days at the Bar in his own _Reminiscences_. I shall, therefore, not touch on that part of his career, as it was practically ended before I knew him--the necessity of earning daily grist for the mill having carried him entirely into the ranks of journalism.