AN OLD COMMONER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2401, 8 March 1900, Page 60

AN OLD COMMONER.

The grave closes, a year passes, and wj? wonder if the man ever lived. Sor/iotimes the weakness of his vanished character forces the illusion into reality, but sometimes, and happily, he is still strong enough to bring i*eproache.^ upon our ready forgefciulness. To-day, with the new Hie of the hour looking forwaid to its own summer, the fresh aim glowing, the yoiinger minds, at high pressure, lull of hope, there is place and a reason for lingering upon the name of the Old Commoner. He was a child while the " incalescent scorpion was still writhing, and the glare of two coronations enlivened the London of his youth. Those were days when there was a light upon Westminster both by land and water which i.-s lon^ ago departed. We do not train our rowing men at the College of Saint Pcrer'in the present years of grace, and somo who love the old school would be glad to transport it, despite ail sacrifice, to greener playing fields than those of Vincent Square. Our Old Commoner was hardly one of these, and yet ho had an open mind. He had not the fervour which belongs to greatness, bufc unliko the little he enjoyed the trouble of looking all round a question, and coining to liis conclusion weightily. You knew, of course, what to expect, all the time. He had a courtly way of telling you that your notions were foolish. He could draw on half a century of experience, and easily make a young man seem a child. But the boat thing of all was to hear hi 3 laugh. . . The Old Commoner nad a big purse, and it was lucky that though his physical frame was little, his herrc A/as big also. His table always groaned beneath a groat pile of appeals, and I believe that few were sent empty away. His was a charitable soul, partly, I think, because he took, for all his cheerfulness, a very serious view of life. A loss which came to him in middle age told heavily upon him : the greater loss that fell on his house in the days when his hair was wholly silvered killed him outright. The whole nature of the man was sensitive, and though he learnt the lesson of toleration, patience, and forgiveness, with a thoroughness that betrayed itself in every word he spoke, he sometimes gave me the impression that the burden of his days was too great for him to be?»r. Even so, it was as a sagacious, kindly adviser, a friend to the poor, a valiant and vigorous optimist, that I chiefly remember him. One night a servant brought him news that a man in the village had taken his life. I was sitting with him in his study : we were deep in some literary affairs which it was important to finish. He rose up quickly. The work must wait. Down into the village he went for the purpose of comforting the poor souls thus bereaved. It was late at night. He would go alone. Was that wonderful? I think it was, for this reason only : ho was at that time over 80 years of age. I did not see him till next morning. He looked tired, but more, he looked sad. He had seen so much in his time, and here he seemed to be puzzling over the why and wherefore without an answer being vouchsafed from the stores of his knowledge. I asked him nothing. The sadness wore off by degrees, and in a week he was himself again.

The Old Commoner united in his person two faculties which are rarely seen in the same person. He was a sound scholar, and yet a more acute man of business never stepped. He directed a railway, he managed a company for life insurance, he kept the accounts of his own estate, he worked hard at committees on scores of different subjects for more than 40 years, and yet his real joy, as he sat at night by his own fireside, or snatched an hour under his loved cedars (dropping the book on his knee now and afrain to watch the squirrels chase ono another across the lawn), was to read the Latin or Greek verse ■which those of his generation had learnt to regard as the natural source of human wisdom. In those hours ho lost himself ; a larger life than ours moved round him — physically ono would think a life more circumscribed, for the world was a litfcle place when those old poets toiled at their work — a greater and a finer and a loftier conception of man's place in the universe held him enchained than any with which his varied practice of affairs had' made him acquainted. The Old' Commoner was happy then I would not leave the Old Commoner with gloomy thoughts ; indeed the last time I saw him he was smiling. There are smiles which have pain in them, but his was not one of these. He knew he had received his deathblow. He was ready to go. His memory did not fail him, even at the last ; he spoke of the pleasures of his long life ; and hearing what ho siid, those who watched smiled too, instead of weeping, as he parsed into the silence — Argosy.