Paul found keen pleasure in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, liking the witty libretto as much as the bright, tuneful melodies. For the work of Caesar Franck, a gifted Belgian musician who died on the threshold of manhood, he had profound admiration, and was of opinion that had he lived Franck would have taken rank with the great masters. As was to be expected, my son had for Welsh music a strong natural sympathy. He held that "Men of Harlech" was one of the greatest of all battle hymns, and that "Morfa Rhuddlan," the ancient Cymric dirge, had never been surpassed as a piece of funereal music. Some of the old Welsh hymn tunes he regarded as unique in their wistfulness and devout aspiration; and as for Welsh choral singing, he thought it was matchless for richness, fire and harmony. CHAPTER IX LITERATURE AND ETHICS _Without the blessing of reading the burden of life would be intolerable and the riches of life reduced to the merest penury._ GLADSTONE. _The taste for reading stores the mind with pleasant thoughts, banishes ennui, fills up the unoccupied interstices and enforced leisures of an active life; and if it is judiciously managed it is one of the most powerful means of training character and disciplining and elevating thought. To acquire this taste in early life is one of the best fruits of education._ LECKY: "THE MAP OF LIFE." From his childhood Paul Jones had been a voracious and an omnivorous reader. He read with amazing rapidity. The first book he enjoyed whole-heartedly was Mabel Dearmer's "Noah's Ark Geography," one of the best children's books written in the past twenty years. He read and re-read this book as a little boy and used to talk lovingly of Kit and his friends, Jum-Jum and the Cockyolly Bird. Alas! Kit (Mrs. Dearmer's son Christopher) and his gifted mother have been claimed as victims by the World War. Paul revelled in "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Swiss Family Robinson," "Don Quixote," "Treasure Island," "The Arabian Nights," "Gulliver's Travels," and classical legends. As he grew older he passed on to "The Mabinogion," "The Pilgrim's Progress," Lamb's "Tales of Shakespeare," and writers like Henty, Manville Fenn, Clark Russell, W. H. Fitchett and P. G. Wodehouse. He followed with delight the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, whose charm never faded for him. He made a point of reading everything written by Conan Doyle. But he gave first place among living writers to George Bernard Shaw, and next place to H. G. Wells. He would never miss a Shaw play. His delight at the first performance he saw of _John Bull's Other Island_ was boisterous. He loved to read that play as well as to see it performed. The glimpses of Ireland and the portraits of Irish character enchanted him. Broadbent--typifying the self-complacency of the well-meaning but Philistine Victorian who had solved to his own