'Sunday,' says he, 'I generally visit
some friends in town and seem to swim in clearer water, but the
dirty green seems all the dirtier when I get back. Luckily I am
fond of my profession, or I could not stand this life.' It is a
question in my mind, if he could have long continued to stand it
without loss. 'We are not here to be happy, but to be good,' quoth
the young philosopher; but no man had a keener appetite for
happiness than Fleeming Jenkin. There is a time of life besides
when apart from circumstances, few men are agreeable to their
neighbours and still fewer to themselves; and it was at this stage
that Fleeming had arrived, later than common and even worse
provided. The letter from which I have quoted is the last of his
correspondence with Frank Scott, and his last confidential letter
to one of his own sex. 'If you consider it rightly,' he wrote long
after, 'you will find the want of correspondence no such strange
want in men's friendships. There is, believe me, something noble
in the metal which does not rust though not burnished by daily
use.
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