"John Newman walked over from Oxford to breakfast one morning: he was then twenty-four, and a most interesting young man; but him I only saw then once, whereas his brother (Frank) was our daily companion, and took great pains in instructing Sarah (Mrs. Walter Mayers) and myself in Political Economy. His talents and piety attracted my admiration, for I had never seen such young men before. They had both been pupils of Mr. Mayers at a large school at Ealing (in which he was a master), and were considered to be converted in very early life." Later on is another entry:-- "In the midsummer holidays of 1825" (John Henry Newman was ordained priest on 29th May, 1825), "I went to stay with Walter and Sarah Mayers, and then began my first acquaintance with John Henry Newman and his brother Frank. The former having walked over from Oxford, seventeen miles, to breakfast, and repeating Milman's beautiful hymn from the _Martyr of Antioch_, 'Brother, thou art gone before us.' "He was just twenty-four, and his brother Frank, who came soon after to assist Walter Mayers with his pupils ... was only twenty, but as bright a specimen of a young Oxford student as I had ever met with. They had both been considered converted in early youth, and so uncommon an event was it to me to meet with Christian young men" (men, that is, whose religion was their motive power, and not only used in the conventional and cold formality then usual in the case of so many families in England), "that my admiration knew no bounds. Of course, I told my sister Maria ... all this, and she was quite prepared to appreciate in like manner, when she went to stay at Worton the following summer." We come now to the time which, whether for happiness or regret, inevitably enters into the lives of most men on this earth--the time when they first meet "the Woman they Never Forget." It does not follow that they are able to marry her, but it _does_ follow that, meet whom they may later, no one will ever oust from her place that first woman in their memories. Francis Newman was only twenty-one when he first met her. Maria Rosina Giberne was a beautiful girl, possessing special charm of manner. It was not long after his first meeting with her that Frank Newman fell passionately in love with her. Long talks on scientific and religious subjects passed between them. But though he cared for her, evidently her feeling for him was only that of friendship and interest, for when, later, he asked her to marry him, she refused. He did not, however, take this for an absolutely final decision (as in effect it was), for five or six years later, when he was on his missionary journey to Syria, and he wrote and begged her to give him a different answer, she refused him again. [Illustration: OVER WORTON RECTORY, OXFORDSHIRE BY KIND PERMISSION OF REV. W. H. LANGHORNE, PRESENT RECTOR OF WORTON]