From half-past eight till six, he must 'file and chip vigorously in
a moleskin suit and infernally dirty.' The work was not new to
him, for he had already passed some time in a Genoese shop; and to
Fleeming no work was without interest. Whatever a man can do or
know, he longed to know and do also. 'I never learned anything,'
he wrote, 'not even standing on my head, but I found a use for it.'
In the spare hours of his first telegraph voyage, to give an
instance of his greed of knowledge, he meant 'to learn the whole
art of navigation, every rope in the ship and how to handle her on
any occasion'; and once when he was shown a young lady's holiday
collection of seaweeds, he must cry out, 'It showed me my eyes had
been idle.' Nor was his the case of the mere literary smatterer,
content if he but learn the names of things. In him, to do and to
do well, was even a dearer ambition than to know. Anything done
well, any craft, despatch, or finish, delighted and inspired him.
I remember him with a twopenny Japanese box of three drawers, so
exactly fitted that, when one was driven home, the others started
from their places; the whole spirit of Japan, he told me, was
pictured in that box; that plain piece of carpentry was as much
inspired by the spirit of perfection as the happiest drawing or the
finest bronze; and he who could not enjoy it in the one was not
fully able to enjoy it in the others.
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