-pot hats, and black
coats and broadcloth generally.

[Illustration: CHARLES KEENE

From a photograph by Elliott and Fry, London.]

Scotch tweed was good enough for him in town and country alike. Though
a Tory in politics, he was democratic in his tastes and habits. He
liked to smoke his short black pipe on the tops of omnibuses; he liked
to lay and light his own fire and cook his mutton-chop upon it. He had
a passion for music and a beautiful voice, and sang with a singular
pathos and charm, but he preferred the sound of his bagpipes to that
of his own singing, and thought that you must prefer it too!

He was for ever sketching in pen and ink, indoors and out--he used at
one time to carry a little ink-bottle at his buttonhole, and steel
pens in his waistcoat-pocket, and thus equipped he would sketch
whatever took his fancy in his walks abroad--houses, 'busses, cabs,
people--bits of street and square, scaffoldings, hoardings with
advertisements--sea, river, moor, lake, and mountain--what has he not
sketched with that masterly pen that had already been so carefully
trained by long and arduous practice in a life-school? His heart was
in his work from first to last; beyond his bagpipes and his old books
(for he was a passionate reader), he seemed to have no other hobby.
His facility in sketching became phenomenal, as also his knowledge of
what to put in and what to leave out, so that the effect he aimed at
should be secured in perfection and with the smallest appearance of
labour.

Among his other gifts he had a physical gift of inestimable value for
such work as ours--namely, a splendid hand--a large, muscular,
well-shaped, and most workman-like hand, whose long deft fingers could
move with equal ease and certainty in all directions. I have seen it
at work--and it was a pleasure to watch its acrobatic dexterity, its
unerring precision of touch. It could draw with nonchalant facility
parallel straight lines, or curved, of just the right thickness and
distance from each other--almost as regular as if they had been drawn
with ruler or compass--almost, but not _quite_. The quiteness would
have made them mechanical, and robbed them of their charm of human
handicraft. A cunning and obedient slave, this wonderful hand, for
which no command from the head could come amiss--a slave, moreover,
that had most thoroughly learned its business by long apprenticeship
to one especial trade, like the head and like the eye that guided