of men, but who had made troops of friends long before people had found
that out. Long before he had made his present fame, he had found these
troops of friends. When he was a green, uncouth, unlicked cub of a boy,
like you, Stephen, he had made them. And do you ask how? He had made them
by listening with all his might. Whoever sailed down on him at an evening
party and engaged him--though it were the most weary of odd old
ladies--was sure, while they were together, of her victim. He would look
her right in the eye, would take in her every shrug and half-whisper,
would enter into all her joys and terrors and hopes, would help her by his
sympathy to find out what the trouble was, and, when it was his turn to
answer, he would answer like her own son. Do you wonder that all the old
ladies loved him? And it was no special court to old ladies. He talked so
to school-boys, and to shy people who had just poked their heads out of
their shells, and to all the awkward people, and to all the gay and easy
people. And so he compelled them, by his magnetism, to talk so to him.
That was the way he made his first friends,--and that was the way, I
think, that he deserved them.

Did you notice how badly I violated this rule when Dr. Ollapod talked to
me of the Gorges land-grants, at Mrs. Pollexfen's? I got very badly
punished, and I deserved what I got, for I had behaved very ill. I ought
not to have known what Edmeston said, or what Will Hackmatack said. I
ought to have been listening, and learning about the Lords sitting in
Equity. Only the next day Dr. Ollapod left town without calling on me, he
was so much displeased. And when, the next week, I was lecturing in
Naguadavick, and the mayor of the town asked me a very simple question
about the titles in the third range, I knew nothing about it and was
disgraced. So much for being rude, and not attending to the man who was
talking to me.