had blessed us with a boy, I'm sure he would have been something
scientific. Will's no dreamer." Mr. Lasher was kindly of heart so long
as you allowed him to maintain that the world was made for one type of
humanity only. He was as breezy as a west wind, loved to bathe in the
garden pond on Christmas Day ("had to break the ice that morning"), and
at penny readings at the village schoolroom would read extracts from
"Pickwick," and would laugh so heartily himself that he would have to
stop and wipe his eyes. "If you must read novels," he would say, "read
Dickens. Nothing to offend the youngest among us--fine breezy stuff with
an optimism that does you good and people you get to know and be fond
of. By Jove, I can still cry over Little Nell and am not ashamed of
it."

He had the heartiest contempt for "wasters" and "failures," and he was
afraid there were a great many in the world. "Give me a man who is a
man," he would say, "a man who can hit a ball for six, run ten miles
before breakfast and take his knocks with the best of them. Wasn't it
Browning who said,

"'God's in His heaven,
All's right with the world.'

Browning was a great teacher--after Tennyson, one of our greatest. Where
are such men to-day!"

He was, therefore, in spite of his love for outdoor pursuits, a cultured
man.

It was natural, perhaps, that he should find Hugh Seymour "a pity."
Nearly everything that he said about Hugh Seymour began with the words----