"Every now and then I have—I suppose it is common—what may be
called a run of luck in ordinary things; I get out of scrapes in a
way I don't deserve; I find letters I have mislaid; annoyances are
mysteriously shunted aside; money flows in; days of extraordinary
happiness succeed one another; little events save vast complications
of trouble, so that I long to turn round and grasp by the hand
or kiss the cheek of the sweet friend who stands at my elbow,
suggesting, ordering, providing day and night, smiling on me as
I sleep, hovering around me as I work, without a word of praise.
Guardian angels! no fable. God gives you a sudden and particular
thought, and while you are independent of circumstances you master
them as well."

But such portraiture as the above is apt to get very vague and
insipid unless one is able to convey a vivid picture of the man as he
walked, and spoke, and lived. The _sic sedebat_ in Trinity College
(Cambridge) chapel has given more people a thrill at the thought of
Bacon than ever gained one from his books. Personality, personal
characteristics, how one craves for them! To take a late instance,
how far more impressive General Gordon's little cane is, which he
twirled in his hand as he stormed redoubts and directed an action,
than a thousand pages of rhetoric about his philosophy or his views
of life.

He was now, as ever, for strangers meeting him for the first time, an
impressive but rather disappointing man. He had shaved his beard,
keeping only his usual moustache; his face was very spare, with a
pallor that was not unhealthy. His hair, which was dark and lay in
masses, he wore generally rather long. He had got into the way, when
without his glasses, of half closing his eyes, because, as he said,