and he laughed mischievously at the misquotation.

"Loves?" I questioned, and he nodded his head smiling; but would not be drawn.

"All romantic and ideal affections. Every successive wave of youths from the
public schools brought some chosen spirits, perfectly wonderful persons, the
most graceful and fascinating disciples that a poet could desire, and I preached
the old-ever-new gospel of individual revolt and individual perfection.
I showed them that sin with its curiosities widened the horizons of life.
Prejudices and prohibitions are mere walls to imprison the soul. Indulgence
may hurt the body, Frank, but nothing except suffering hurts the spirit; it is
self-denial and abstinence that maim and deform the soul."

"Then they knew you as a great talker even at Oxford?" I asked in some surprise.

"Frank," he cried reprovingly, laughing at the same time delightfully, "I was a
great talker at school. I did nothing at Trinity but talk, my reading was done
at odd hours. I was the best talker ever seen in Oxford."

"And did you find any teacher there like Mahaffy?" I asked, "any professor with
a touch of the poet?"

He came to seriousness at once.

"There were two or three teachers, Frank," he replied, "greater than Mahaffy;
teachers of the world as well as of Oxford. There was Ruskin for instance, who
appealed to me intensely--a wonderful man and a most wonderful writer. A sort
of exquisite romantic flower; like a violet filling the whole air with the
ineffable perfume of belief. Ruskin has always seemed to me the Plato of
England--a Prophet of the Good and True and Beautiful, who saw as Plato saw that