young men who, there for the purpose of learning, yet did not always
_want_ to learn! He had, in especial, that rather vague and narrow
definition of genius--"an infinite capacity for taking pains." He "took"
them always with any scholar who had failed to grasp his meaning in some
one of his instructions. He could put the whole matter in some absolutely
new light--take it from an utterly different point of view; so that, while
giving another chance to the slow-witted, he did not keep his whole class
waiting. The quality of teaching is not strained. It is doubtful if it is
capable of being learnt, if not in the first instance, in some measure,
innate. Lying dormant in a man's being--even if, perhaps, its presence is
unrecognized by its owner--it can certainly be developed by him when he is
conscious of it. But if the power in embryo be absent, it is a difficult
matter indeed to attain by effort any capacity of which one has not
already the beginnings in oneself. Indeed, a famous writer of another age
has written the word "impossible" against this attempt.

Frank Newman could, and would, take any trouble to help any dull student
over some mathematical or classical stile, but he was not an adept at
quickly getting into touch with that Presence which has moved, in
whimsical measure, through the ways and by-ways of this life since the
world began with coat of many colours, upon which the sun of merry
imagination was always sparkling, and cap and bells which could for the
moment ring sudden, spontaneous mirth across the shadows of the darkest
day. If in medieval days it could cross the cell of some grave and
reverend monastery, and guide the hand of some sculptor busy at his
gargoyle for some majestic church, surely it could, with the greatest ease
in the world, cross the threshold of some crowded class-room where a
learned, absorbed professor was endeavouring to gain the attention of a
number of young men rejoicing in their youth and on the look-out for the
first suggestion of the Spirit of Humour. Frank Newman was not quick at