So much for the affectionate reverence in which one held him who was starting life’s race when that “famous interview” took place. Joe was comparatively young himself then, but as the years went on there were many of greater disparity in age, who did not fail to pay him the same tribute; indeed, I don’t think there was ever any sense of difference in this respect between him and the many good comrades in many classes of society who rejoiced to _work_ with him because he always lightened labour with kindness and good humour--who rejoiced to _play_ with him because he was never afraid of, or at a loss for, the right word at the right moment, were it grave or gay, appreciative or pungent as the occasion required. He was always the encourager, never the discourager, of sincere and patient effort: bombast and a pandering to mere popularity, he could censure with words of biting wit, but he never laughed at those who sent their arrows at the moon though he knew well enough that such might not achieve financial prosperity. His unfaltering advice was always that everyone should stick to what he best loved to do. “My dear,” I remember his saying to me one day, when I had tried and signally failed to write a popular farce, “it takes a more competent fool than you to know just what kind of foolishness the public wants. Don’t you be put off what you _can_ do because you fancy it is not what they want.” And in a letter written perhaps in a more serious spirit to one often oppressed by a sense of failure I find the words: “There is no such thing as failure--excepting the failure to see and love the beauty of life.” These are among the graver memories of him: his generation will remember him most readily for what Sir James Barrie, writing to me of him as “a man for whom I had a mighty admiration,” appreciatively describes as “his positive genius for conversation.” The latter word is so apt because it perceives that the Celtic gift of repartee was the most finely pointed of his arrows: he was generally at his best when some might have fancied that he was going to be non-plussed. One day he told me of a dinner at which King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, was the honoured guest. Someone had whispered to the Prince that my husband was a Radical, and he, turning to him, asked if such a thing could be true. “I _am_ a Radical, Sir,” replied Joe, and after a little pause added: “but I never mention it in respectable society.” The table was silent for an instant, but the Prince led the way with a laugh and all was well.