attitude he did justice to himself and others, reposed unshaken in his old beliefs, and recognised their limits without anger or alarm.  His last recorded remark, on the last night of his life, was after he had been arguing against Calvinism[41] with his minister and was interrupted by an intolerable pang.  “After all,” he said, “of all the ’isms, I know none so bad as rheumatism.”  My own last sight of him was some time before, when we dined together at an inn; he had been on circuit, for he stuck to his duties like a chief part of his existence; and I remember it as the only occasion on which he ever soiled his lips with slang—­a thing he loathed.  We were both Roberts; and as we took our places at table, he addressed me with a twinkle:  “We are just what you would call two bob."[42] He offered me port, I remember, as the proper milk of youth; spoke of “twenty-shilling notes”; and throughout the meal was full of old-world pleasantry and quaintness, like an ancient boy on a holiday.  But what I recall chiefly was his confession that he had never read Othello to an end.[43] Shakespeare was his continual study.  He loved nothing better than to display his knowledge and memory by adducing parallel passages from Shakespeare, passages where the same word was employed, or the same idea differently treated.  But Othello had beaten him.  “That noble gentleman and that noble lady—­h’m—­too painful for me.”  The same night the boardings were covered with posters, “Burlesque of Othello,” and the contrast blazed up in my mind like a bonfire.  An unforgettable look it gave me into that kind man’s soul.  His acquaintance was indeed a liberal and pious education.[44] All the humanities were taught in that bare dining-room beside his gouty footstool.  He was a piece of good advice; he was himself the instance that pointed and adorned his various talk.  Nor could a young man have found elsewhere a place so set apart from envy, fear, discontent, or any of the passions that debase; a life so honest and composed; a soul like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch in music—­as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chatting at the eleventh hour, under the shadow of eternity, fearless and gentle.

The second class of old people are not anecdotic; they are rather hearers than talkers, listening to the young with an amused and critical attention.  To have this sort of intercourse to perfection, I think we must go to old ladies.  Women are better hearers than men, to begin with; they learn, I fear in anguish, to bear with the tedious and infantile vanity of the other sex; and we will take more from a woman than even from the oldest man in the way of biting comment.  Biting comment is the chief part, whether for profit or amusement, in this business.  The old lady that I have in my eye is a very caustic speaker, her tongue, after years of practice, in absolute command, whether for silence or attack.  If she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted to curse