n the home to
his wife. He had been an early victim to that wave of philoprogenitive
and educational enthusiasm which distinguished the closing decade of the
nineteenth century. He was full of plans in those days for the education
of his boy, and the thought of the youngster played a large part in
the series of complicated emotional crises with which he celebrated
the departure of his wife, crises in which a number of old school and
college friends very generously assisted--spending weekends at Seagate
for this purpose, and mingling tobacco, impassioned handclasps and
suchlike consolation with much patient sympathetic listening to his
carefully balanced analysis of his feelings. He declared that his son
was now his one living purpose in life, and he sketched out a scheme of
moral and intellectual training that he subsequently embodied in five
very stimulating and intimate articles for the SCHOOL WORLD, but never
put into more than partial operation.

"I have read my father's articles upon this subject," wrote Benham,
"and I am still perplexed to measure just what I owe to him. Did he ever
attempt this moral training he contemplated so freely? I don't think
he did. I know now, I knew then, that he had something in his mind....
There were one or two special walks we had together, he invited me
to accompany him with a certain portentousness, and we would go out
pregnantly making superficial remarks about the school cricket and
return, discussing botany, with nothing said.

"His heart failed him.

"Once or twice, too, he seemed to be reaching out at me from the school
pulpit.

"I think that my father did manage to convey to me his belief that there
were these fine things, honour, high aims, nobilities. If I did not get
this belief from him then I do not know how I got it. But it was as if
he hinted at a treasure that had got very dusty in an attic, a treasure
which he hadn't himself been able to spend...."

The father who had intended to mould his son ended by watching him grow,
not always with sympathy or understanding. He was an overworked man
assailed by many futile anxieties. One sees him striding about the
establishment with his gown streaming out behind him urging on the
groundsman or the gardener, or dignified, expounding the particular
advantages of Seagate to enquiring parents, one sees him unnaturally
cheerful and facetious at the midday dinner table, one imagines him
keeping up high aspirations in a rather