first minute he came into the shop. And the magnificence of Keith's
head had been pointed out to Isaac long before that, when Keith
couldn't have been more than ten--why, nine he was; that was the
beginning of it. Isaac could remember how Sir Joseph Harden of
Lazarus, the great scholar, who was one of Isaac's best customers,
poking round the little dingy shop in Paternoster Row (it was all
second-hand in those days), came on the young monkey perched on the
step-ladder, reading Homer. Sir Joseph had made him come down and
translate for him then and there. And Keith went at it, translating
for twenty minutes straight on end. Sir Joseph had said nothing, but
he asked him what he was going to be, and the young Turk grinned up at
him and said he was going to be a poet, "like 'Omer, that was what he
was going to be." Isaac had said that was just like his impudence, but
Sir Joseph stood there looking at him and smiling on the side of his
face that Keith couldn't see, and he told the little chap to "work
hard and mind his rough breathings." Isaac had supposed that was some
sort of a joke, for Keith, he tried hard to grin, though his face went
red hot all over. Then Sir Joseph had turned round very serious and
asked if he, Rickman, had any other sons, because, whatever he did
with the rest of them, he must make this one a scholar. Isaac had said
No, he hadn't any but that one boy, and he would have to be brought up
to the business. He was afraid he couldn't spare the time to make much
of a scholar of him. Time, said Isaac, was money. What Sir Joseph said
then Isaac had never forgotten. He had said; "True, time was money,
loose cash in your pockets; but brains were capital." And there wasn't
a better investment for them, he had added, than a good sound
classical education. Isaac was to send the boy to the City of London,
then to the London University, if he couldn't rise to Oxford; but Sir
Joseph's advice was Oxford. Let him try for a scholarship. He added
that he would like to do something for him later on if he lived. Isaac