naturally boyish and shy, could be both gay and debonair, quite
irresistible in fact, when he was surrounded by congenial spirits! He
played hockey, and was made a member of several clubs, sketched and
made beautiful photographs. His time he divided strictly between the
study of man and the study of theology, and though he did much hard,
thorough and careful work in connexion with the latter, he always
maintained that for a man who was going to be a parson the former was
the more important study of the two.

He used, however, to complain much at this time of feeling himself
incapable of any very strong emotion, even that of sorrow.

No doubt there is more stimulation to the brain than to the heart in
the highly critical atmosphere of all phases of the intellectual life
at Oxford; also Donald had hardly yet got over the shocks of his youth
and the loneliness of his life abroad. He was, too, essentially and
curiously the son of his father--even to his minor tastes, such as his
connoisseur's palate for a good wine and his judgment in "smokes"--and
this feeling of a certain detachment from the larger emotions of life
was always his father's pose--the philosopher's. In his father's case
it was perhaps engendered, if not necessitated, by his poor health and
wretched nerves.

But can we not trace his dissatisfaction at this time in what he felt
to be his cold philosophical attitude towards life to the same cause
as much of the misery he suffered as a boy! In the paper he calls
"School," which follows with that entitled "Home," he tells us how he
would have liked to have chastised a school-fellow "had he dared,"
and his failure to dare was evidently what reduced him to the state of
impotent rage described on page 9 of this sketch. Again at Woolwich,