With great love and patience, and the most understanding sympathy and consideration, he combined insistence on discipline.

He never physically punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom I was ever really afraid.

I do not mean that it was a wrong fear, for he was entirely just, and we children adored him.

We used to wait in the library in the evening until we could hear his key rattling in the latch of the front hall, and then rush out to greet him; and we would troop into his room while he was dressing, to stay there as long as we were permitted, eagerly examining anything which came out of his pockets which could be regarded as an attractive novelty.

Every child has fixed in his memory various details which strike it as of grave importance.