"No--tarred hemp and roses." Then he added slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were recalling some incident in his past life: "Quite a different kind of girl, my boy, from Christine; about as different as--well, there isn't any comparison. Yes, tarred hemp and red roses; funny combination, isn't it?--and yet I never catch the odor of one without smelling the other. And the whole scene comes back, too, every detail: the rolling ship; the girl as she lay in her chair, the roses in her lap; the tones of the Captain's voice (I have sometimes heard them in my sleep); the glare of the overhead light, and then the splash. Queer things, these memories!" Mac paused, and smoked on quietly. I made no answer. If you want Mac at his best, never interrupt him. When he is in one of his reminiscent moods his philosophy, his knowledge of life, his wide personal experience, his many adventures by land and sea make him the most delightful of conversationalists, while his choice of words and marvellous powers of description--talking as a painter talks, one who sees and who, therefore, can make you see; using words as some men do pigments with all the force of their contrasts--make his descriptions but so many brilliantly colored pictures. Then his voice! Suddenly, without a moment's warning, your eyes fill up, leaving you wondering why, until you remember some throat tone that vibrated through you like the note of a violin. When he is in one of these moods he rarely looks at me or at anyone who listens, especially when he is alone with some one of his chums--and we two were alone this afternoon, it being Varnishing Day, and all of the men at the Academy. He looks up at the ceiling, lying back in his chair, talking to some crack or stain in the plastering, or drops his head and talks to the smouldering coals, his human eyes fixed on the logs. This habit of talking to whatever is within the reach of his hands or legs--his brushes, palette, colors, the chair that gets in his way, the rug he stumbles over--is characteristic of the man; woodsmen have it who live alone in great forests. Mac's explanation is that he lived so much alone in his early life that he acquired the habit in self-defence. The fire, however, seems to understand, never answering back as it does to me when I try to punch it into life, but simmering away like a slow-boiling pot, giving out a steady glow for hours as it listens, nursing its heat until the master has finished or puts on another log. Mac refilled his pipe, rested the tongs where his hand could grasp them, and continued, his big shoulders filling the chair, the light of the blaze on his humorous, kindly face.