inning a game. You must sharpen my wits,
which are blunt enough just now." In short, it was a cry from the island
of boredom to come over the water and administer first-aid.

Accordingly, I started for Cowes, and was welcomed at the pier with all
my host's habitual and vivacious hospitality. Scarcely were we seated in
our wicker-chairs in face of the Solent, not twinkling as usual with
pleasure-sails, but sinister with strange instruments of warfare, than
he began the attack. "What am I to do with myself?" was the instant
question; "what means can I find of occupying this dreadful void of
leisure?" To which the obvious reply was: "First of all, you must
exhibit to me the famous attractions of Cowes!" "There are none," he
replied in comic despair, but we presently invented some, and my visit,
which extended over several radiant days of a perfect August, was
diversified with walks and excursions by land and water, in which my
companion was as active and as ardent as though he had been nineteen
instead of seventy-nine. In a suit picturesquely marine, with his
beautiful silver hair escaping from a jaunty yachting cap, he was the
last expression of vivacity and gaiety.

The question of his intellectual occupation in the future came, however,
incessantly to the front; and our long talks in the strange and uncanny
solitude of the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle always came to this: What
task was he to take up next? His large autobiography was now coming back
to him from the printers in packets of proof, with which he was closeted
night and morning; and I suggested that while this was going on there
was no need for him to think about future enterprises. To tell the
truth, I had regarded the _Memories_ as likely to be the final labour of
Lord Redesdale's busy life. It seemed to me that at his advanced age he
might now well withdraw into dignified repose. I even hinted so much in
terms as delicate as I could make them, but the suggestion was not well
received. I became conscious that there was nothing he was so little
prepared to welcome as "repose"; that, in fact, the terror which
possessed him was precisely the dread of having to withdraw from the
stage of life. His deafness, which now began to be excessive, closed to
his eager spirit so many of the avenues of experience, that he was more
than ever anxious to keep clear those that remained to him, and of
these, literary expression came to be almost the only one left. In the
absenc