exceptionally difficult but grant-earning words, such as
"empyreumatic" or "botryoidal."

Some words in constant use he rarely explained. I remember once
sticking up my hand and asking him in the full flow of description,
"Please, sir, what is flocculent?"

"The precipitate is."

"Yes, sir, but what does it mean?"

"Oh! flocculent!" said my father, "flocculent! Why--" he extended
his hand and arm and twiddled his fingers for a second in the air.
"Like that," he said.

I thought the explanation sufficient, but he paused for a moment
after giving it. "As in a flock bed, you know," he added and
resumed his discourse.


3

My father, I am afraid, carried a natural incompetence in practical
affairs to an exceptionally high level. He combined practical
incompetence, practical enterprise and a thoroughly sanguine
temperament, in a manner that I have never seen paralleled in any
human being. He was always trying to do new things in the briskest
manner, under the suggestion of books or papers or his own
spontaneous imagination, and as he had never been trained to do
anything whatever in his life properly, his futilities were