[Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]

I am generally rather a happy "sort" of man, but your letter makes me
very happy. How kind you are! Up in the morning betimes to catch people
still in their beds warm with a generous enthusiasm, to surprise their
sympathies before they had "faded into the light of common day," and to
collect all their "loving" words for me. That was a good and faithful
act; and I am deeply grateful.

Yes, the man was right. I do love the poor wastrels, and you are right,
I have it from my father. He had a way of taking for granted, not only
the innate virtue of these outcasts, but their unquestioned
respectability. He, at least, never questioned it. The effect was
twofold.

Some of the "weak brethren" felt uncomfortable at being met on those
terms of equality. My father might have been practising on them the most
dreadful irony; and they were "that shy" and confused. But it was not
irony, not a bit of it; just a sense of respect, fine consideration for
the poor "sowls," well--respect, that's it, respect for all human
beings; _his_ respect made _them_ respectable. Wasn't it grand? To
others my father was a perfect Port-y-shee.[3] To be in the same room
with him was enough. To be conscious that he was there, that he didn't
fight strange of them, that he never dreamt of "scowlin'" them, that
they were treated as gentlemen. Oh the comfort, the gerjugh,[4] the
interval of repose! Extraordinary, though, was it not? To think of a
_Pazon_ respecting men's vices even; not as vices, God forbid! but as
parts of _them_, very likely all but inseparable from them; at any rate,