"empyreumatic" or "botryoidal."

Some words in constant use he rarely explained. Iremember once

sticking up my hand and asking him in the full flow of description,

"Please, sir, what is flocculent?"

"The precipitate is."

"Yes, sir, but what does it mean?"

"Oh! flocculent! " said my father, "flocculent! Why-" he extended

his hand and arm and twiddled his fingers for a second in the air.

"Like that," he said.

Ithought the explanation sufficient, but he paused for a moment

after giving it. "As in a flock bed, youknow," he added and

resumed his discourse.

3

My father,Iam afraid, carried a natural incompetence in practical

affairs to an exceptionally high level. He combined practical

incompetence, practical enterprise and a thoroughly sanguine

temperament, in a manner that I have neverseen paralleled in any

humanbeing. He was always trying to do new things in the briskest

manner, under the suggestion of books or papers or his own

spontaneous imagination, and as he had never been trained to do

anything whatever in his life properly, his futilities were

extensive and thorough. At one time he nearly gave up his classes

for intensive culture, so enamoured was he of its possibilities; the

peculiar pungency of the manure he got, in pursuit of a chemical

theory of his own, has scarred my olfactorymemories for a lifetime.

The intensive culture phase is very clear in mymemory; it came near

the end of his career and when I was between eleven and twelve. I

was mobilised to gather caterpillars on several occasions, and

assisted in nocturnal raids upon the slugs by lantern-light that

wrecked my preparation work for school next day. My father dug up

<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>