From
that it was but a step to ask himself 'what truth was sticking in
their heads'; for even the falsest form of words (in Fleeming's
life-long opinion) reposed upon some truth, just as he could 'not
even allow that people admire ugly things, they admire what is
pretty in the ugly thing.' And before he sat down to write his
letter, he thought he had hit upon the explanation. 'I fancy the
true idea,' he wrote, 'is that you must never do yourself or anyone
else a moral injury - make any man a thief or a liar - for any
end'; quite a different thing, as he would have loved to point out,
from never stealing or lying. But this perfervid disputant was not
always out of key with his audience. One whom he met in the same
house announced that she would never again be happy. 'What does
that signify?' cried Fleeming. 'We are not here to be happy, but
to be good.' And the words (as his hearer writes to me) became to
her a sort of motto during life.
From Fairbairn's and Manchester, Fleeming passed to a railway
survey in Switzerland, and thence again to Mr.
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