On one of the afternoons when I sat with him in his study, within the precincts of the university, he said, "Patience, great patience is the need of this generation. It asks results before it earns them. Man is too wasteful of the resources he finds in the earth. The most of our coal is lost in smoke; the most of our heat is dissipated in the air. We need patience not less than courage in dealing with our problems." The study was lined with engravings and photographs. Darwin and Joule and Faraday looked down from the walls, and there were pictures of the cable-laying ships, the _Hooper_, and the _Great Eastern_. There were trophies of travel,--from specimens of sea-bottom along the African coast, to quite personal mementos of his lectures at {113} Johns Hopkins University and other places in America. A typical day of Lord Kelvin's was, in outline, this: After breakfast he would, at nine, face his class in the university and lecture for an hour. I heard him in such an hour lecture on "Kepler's Laws." He lectured to his class three days a week. After the lecture he would go to White's where he was perfecting an electric metre. After White's he would return to the university and lecture until one o'clock, say, on the "Higher Mathematics." Then home to lunch. After lunch consulting work on the lighting of a town by electricity. After that an hour in Lady Kelvin's drawing-room, taking tea with friends. Then work in the study over the laws governing the formation of crystals. Then dinner. Then calculations in the study, or writing a paper for one of the numerous societies of which he was a working member. In the intervals, with his secretary's aid, he would attend to his correspondence. And, if waiting for his secretary, out of a coat pocket would come the little green book, and into it would go notes, calculations, or diagrams, perhaps all three. That little green book would come out whenever he had a minute to spare, in his dressing-room, or on the stairs, or in a train, or a cab, wherever he happened to be, and the thought flashed. I often wondered what his thoughts were on the conservation of personal energy. {114} CHAPTER IX TENNYSON Freshwater is an overgrown village which sprawls about the western end of the lovely Isle of Wight. The meanness of much of its masonry is compensated by its remarkably wholesome air. Man has done his best to spoil Freshwater, but he has not wholly succeeded--yet. Give him time, and more radicalism, and he will make it one of the ugly spots of earth. I made its acquaintance in the early spring of 1882, and subsequently have visited it many times.