From the year 1885, when my aunt, Mrs. Mark Pattison, married Sir Charles, I was constantly with them, acting from 1893 as secretary in their trade- union work. Death came to her in 1904, and till January, 1911, he fought alone. In the earlier days there was much young life about the house. Mrs. H. J. Tennant, that most loyal of friends, stands out as one who, hardly less than I, used to look on 76, Sloane Street, as a home. There is no need to bear witness to the happiness of that home. _The Book of the Spiritual Life_, in which are collected my aunt's last essays, contains also the Memoir of her written by her husband, and the spirit which breathes through those pages bears perfect testimony to an abiding love. The atmosphere of the house was one of work, and the impression left upon the mind was that no life was truly lived unless it was largely dedicated to public service. To the labours of his wife, a "Benedictine, working always and everywhere," Sir Charles bears testimony. But what of his own labours? "Nothing will ever come before my work," were his initial words to me in the days when I first became their secretary. Through the years realization of this fact became complete, so that, towards the last, remonstrances at his ceaseless labour were made with hopeless hearts; we knew he would not purchase length of life by the abatement of one jot of his energy. He did not expect long life, and death was ever without terror for him. For years he anticipated a heart seizure, so that in the complete ordering of his days he lived each one as if it were his last. The house was a fine school, for in it no waste of force was permitted. He had drilled himself to the suppression of emotion, and he would not tolerate it in those who worked with him except as an inspiration to action. "Keep your tears for your speeches, so that you make others act; leave off crying and think what you can do," was the characteristic rebuke bestowed upon one of us who had reported a case of acute industrial suffering. He never indulged in rhetoric or talked of first principles, and one divined from chance words of encouragement the deep feeling and passion for justice which formed the inspiration of his work. He utilized every moment. The rapidity of his transition from one kind of work to another, and his immediate concentration on a subject totally different from that which he had previously handled, were only equalled by the rapidity with which he turned from work to play. With the same unerring quickness he would gather up the contents of a book or appreciate the drift of a question. This latter characteristic, I fear, often disconcerted disputants, who objected to leave their nicely turned periods incomplete because he had grasped the point involved before they were halfway through a sentence; but his delight in finding this same rapidity of thought in others was great, and I remember his instancing it as a characteristic of Mr. Asquith.