“Or I come across an expression of which I haven’t grasped the precise meaning, ‘gene,’ let us say, or ‘eclectic,’ and the next day I hear the rector and curate discussing them.  These are real cases.

“Or I am interrupted in my writing by Edward, who takes the letters to the post, and forces this from under my hand, as I write:  not, surely, only to spare you the receipt of a dull and immature letter.

      “Arthur Hamilton.”

I have only one other letter of any especial interest about this date.

“If only a book could be written about a hermit, a man that deliberately left the world, retiring, not to an impracticable distance—­let us say to a small farm, in a country village, with half an acre of garden—­and there let no sound from the world without reach him, except incidentally, and lived a pure and uncontaminated life, watching his garden, and turning over, very slowly, such experience as he had gained in life, with the intention, if anything came of it, of telling the world any solution that occurred to him of the great question—­’Is one bound to meet life in the ordinary manner, by plunging into it and swimming up the stream, or does one meet it best by abjuring it?’ There is much to be said for both views.  I am not at all sure that these or similar lives are not lived, and that the only practical bearing of them is that a man is not bound to tell his discoveries of our enigmas.  I mean, I can conceive a man, under such circumstances, reaching a very high standpoint, arriving at very lofty knowledge of the problems of fate and life, and at the same time finding a ban laid upon him, a tacit [Greek:  anagke], not to reveal it to others, it being hinted to him that those who would attain to it at all must attain to it as he has himself attained, by finding out the way themselves.”

CHAPTER XII

About this time he made the acquaintance of some neighbours whom he approved, and found companions for Edward Bruce in the boys of the family, who were home for the holidays.  The boy brightened up so much under the new surroundings, that Arthur determined to get a boy of the same age to educate with Edward, and he accordingly inserted an advertisement in the Times.  I have it before me now, in the fast-yellowing paper.

“A gentleman is anxious to find a companion to be educated with his adopted son; he offers him board and teaching free, but must see, personally, both the parent or guardian and the boy whom it is proposed to send.”

But the advertisement was withdrawn, as a friend of mine, a certain General Ellis, not very well off, and with a large family, offered to send a boy of his to Tredennis—­an offer which Arthur accepted provisionally.  He had the boy to stay with him for a fortnight, and at the end of the time agreed to take him.

As the boys were not to go to a public school, and as neither of them looked forward to teaching as a career, the object of their teaching was to make them as quick in grasp of a subject as possible, as enthusiastic as possible, and as cultivated.  Arthur favoured me with a letter, or rather a treatise, upon their education, fragments of which I submit to my readers.