"It is," he would observe, "one of the few pleasurable capacities spared by old age." He had, moreover, a scholarly habit of verifying his references and quotations; and if the original, however familiar, happened to be in a dead or foreign language, would have his secretary indite it in the margin.

His secretary, Mr.
Simeon, after taking the Sermon down from dictation, had made out a fair copy, and stood now at a little distance from the corner of the writing-table, in a deferential attitude.
The Master leaned forward over the manuscript; and a ray of afternoon sunshine, stealing in between a mullion of the oriel and the edge of a drawn blind, touched his bowed and silvery head as if with a benediction.

He was in his seventy-third year; lineal and sole-surviving descendant of that Alberic de Blanchminster (Albericus de Albo Monasterio) who had founded this Hospital of Christ's Poor in 1137, and the dearest, most distinguished-looking old clergyman imaginable.

An American lady had once summed him up as a Doctor of Divinity in Dresden china; and there was much to be allowed to the simile when you noted his hands, so shapely and fragile, or his complexion, transparent as old ivory--and still more if you had leisure to observe his saintliness, so delicately attuned to this world.
"_As having nothing, and yet possessing all things_."-- The Master laid his forefinger upon the page and looked up reproachfully.
"os meden echontes--my good Simeon, is it possible?
A word so common as os! and after all these years you make it perispomenon!" Mr.Simeon stammered contrition.

In the matter of Greek accents he knew himself to be untrustworthy beyond hope.