graphic sketch in one of his letters: 'Out over the railway
bridge, along a wide road raised to the level of a ground floor
above the land, which, not being built upon, harbours puddles,
ponds, pigs, and Irish hovels; - so to the dock warehouses, four
huge piles of building with no windows, surrounded by a wall about
twelve feet high - in through the large gates, round which hang
twenty or thirty rusty Irish, playing pitch and toss and waiting
for employment; - on along the railway, which came in at the same
gates and which branches down between each vast block - past a
pilot-engine butting refractory trucks into their places - on to
the last block, [and] down the branch, sniffing the guano-scented
air and detecting the old bones. The hartshorn flavour of the
guano becomes very strong, as I near the docks where, across the
ELBA'S decks, a huge vessel is discharging her cargo of the brown
dust, and where huge vessels have been discharging that same cargo
for the last five months.' This was the walk he took his young
wife on the morrow of his return. She had been used to the society
of lawyers and civil servants, moving in that circle which seems to
itself the pivot of the nation and is in truth only a clique like
another; and Fleeming was to her the nameless assistant of a
nameless firm of engineers, doing his inglorious business, as she
now saw for herself, among unsavoury surroundings. But when their
walk brought them within view of the river, she beheld a sight to
her of the most novel beauty: four great, sea-going ships dressed
out with flags. 'How lovely!' she cried. 'What is it for?' - 'For
you,' said Fleeming. Her surprise was only equalled by her
pleasure. But perhaps, for what we may call private fame, there is
no life like that of the engineer; who is a great man in out-of-
the-way places, by the dockside or on the desert island or in
populous ships, and remains quite unheard of in the coteries of