Even in those early days he loved the French; their joy of living appealed to him as it did in all the Latin races, and their wit--more subtle and polished than the Italian’s child-like though not childish high spirits--was akin to his own, and it was often wonderful how swiftly he would “get the hang of it” even when sometimes he would appeal to me for translation of a word; while their shrewd and clear common-sense found an echo somewhere on another side of him, perhaps in his Border ancestry. Yet I have heard him say that, in his opinion, the deeper courtesy of an unspoiled Italian--were he peasant or peer--came out of a further and finer civilization. These travelling conversations, even in a foreign tongue, were entirely in keeping with Joe’s intensely human temperament. He had none of the aloofness of the Britisher of that day; and I remember his amusement at the talk of a party of English shop-keepers in a second-class railway carriage on the Paris-Calais route. “To see them working men forced to sit and smoke their pipe in the street for a breath of fresh air on a summer evening fairly flummoxed me,” said one. “Why the poorest of _us_ ’ave got a bit of a backyard.” Though he was the most reserved of men as regards deep, personal matters, he found that sort of sentiment was utterly ridiculous to his Irish sense of humour. I recollect hearing Joe whimsically tell a friend once that he would far sooner confide his most intimate concerns to a man in a train than to his nearest and dearest; and then he would recall (or invent?) the most humorous conversations which he had overheard or in which he had taken part, chiefly on the physical ills of life during long journeys in dark railway carriages. I don’t suppose he went these lengths in French; probably his vocabulary was not equal to it. He said he missed my help on that Loire journey although I think he liked learning for himself too. I certainly, sitting in a tiny cottage near Witley with my sister and the two children, missed my opportunity and sighed to be with him, especially when his letter home contained a passage like this: “Marseilles is a city with something of romantic suggestion about it. One feels that it is one of the Avenues of the East, one of the places also that connects the old world with the new. It was terribly hot, but the sea tempered the sun and the sea-bath in the evening was a delicious revenge for the heat of the day. The view over the Mediterranean at sunset is delightful, with an atmosphere that seems to be stained with rose colour floating over a sea of real aquamarine.”