"This was true. ... He had been and always will be happy, because
my father's nature turned out no waste product: he had none of
that useless stuff in him that lies in heaps near factories. He
took his own happiness with him, and was self-centred and self-
sufficing: for a sociable being, the most self-sufficing I have
ever known; I can think of no one of such vitality who was so
independent of other people; he could golf alone, play billiards
alone, walk alone, shoot alone, fish alone, do everything alone;
and yet he was dependent on both my mother and my stepmother and
on all occasions loved simple playfellows. ... Some one to carry
his clubs, or to wander round the garden with, would make him
perfectly happy. It was at these times, I think, that my father
was at his sweetest. Calm as a sky after showers, he would discuss
every topic with tenderness and interest and appeared to be
unupsettable; he had eternal youth, and was unaffected by a
financial world which had been spinning round him all day.

"The striking thing about him was his freedom from suspicion.
Thrown from his earliest days among common, shrewd men of
singularly unspiritual ideals--most of them not only on the make
but I might almost say on the pounce--he advanced on his own lines
rapidly and courageously, not at all secretively--almost
confidingly--yet he was rarely taken in.

"He knew his fellow-creatures better in the East-end than in the
West-end of London and had a talent for making men love him; he
swept them along on the impulse of his own decided intentions. He
was never too busy nor too prosperous to help the struggling and
was shocked by meanness or sharp practice, however successful.