my friend. He was bent and wasted, his hair was white;
and there was that sunken look about the temples, that tracery of lines
about the eyes that tells of constant suffering. But the voice was
unaltered, full, resonant, and distinct as ever. He sat down and was
silent for a moment. I think that the motion even from one room into
another caused him great pain. Then he began to talk; first he told me
of the accident, and his journeys in search of health. "But the
comfort is," he added, "that the doctors have now decided that they can
do no more for me, and I need leave home no more." He told me that he
still went to his business every day--and I found that it was
prospering greatly--and that though he could not drive, he could get
out in a wheeled chair; he said nothing of his sufferings, and
presently began to talk of books and politics. Gradually I realised
that I was in the company of a thoroughly cheerful man. It was not the
cheerfulness that comes of effort, of a determined attempt to be
interested in old pursuits, but the abundant and overflowing
cheerfulness of a man who has still a firm grasp on life. He argued,
he discussed with the same eager liveliness; and his laugh had the
careless and good-humoured ring of a man whose mind was entirely
content.

His wife soon entered; and we sat for a long time talking. I was
keenly moved by the relations between them; she displayed none of that
minute attention to his needs, none of that watchful anxiety which I
have often thought, tenderly lavished as it is upon invalids, must
bring home to them a painful sense of their dependence and
helplessness; and he too showed no trace of that fretful exigence which
is too often the characteristic of those who cannot assist themselves,
and which almost invariably arises in the case of eager and active
temperaments thus afflicted, those whose minds range quickly from
subject to subject, and who feel their disabilities at every turn. At
one moment he wanted his glasses to read something from a book that lay
beside him. He asked his wife with a gentle courtesy to find them.
They were discovered in his own breast-pocket, into which he could not
even put his feeble hand, and he apologised for his stupidity with an
affectionate humility which made me feel inclined to tears, especially
when I saw the pleasure which the performance of this trifling service
obviously caused her. It was just the same, I afterwards noticed, with