I had met Grant while he was still a judge, on the balcony of the National Liberal Club, and exchanged a few words about the weather.

Then we had talked for about an hour about politics and God; for men always talk about the most important things to total strangers.

It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a moustache.
One of the most interesting of Basil's motley group of acquaintances was Professor Chadd.

He was known to the ethnological world (which is a very interesting world, but a long way off this one) as the second greatest, if not the greatest, authority on the relations of savages to language.
He was known to the neighbourhood of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, as a bearded man with a bald head, spectacles, and a patient face, the face of an unaccountable Nonconformist who had forgotten how to be angry.

He went to and fro between the British Museum and a selection of blameless tea-shops, with an armful of books and a poor but honest umbrella.