'
To this clearness Fleeming had attained; and although he heard the
voice of the eternal seas and weighed its message, he was yet able,
until the end of his life, to sport upon these shores of death and
mystery with the gaiety and innocence of children.
IV.
It was as a student that I first knew Fleeming, as one of that
modest number of young men who sat under his ministrations in a
soul-chilling class-room at the top of the University buildings.
His presence was against him as a professor: no one, least of all
students, would have been moved to respect him at first sight:
rather short in stature, markedly plain, boyishly young in manner,
cocking his head like a terrier with every mark of the most
engaging vivacity and readiness to be pleased, full of words, full
of paradox, a stranger could scarcely fail to look at him twice, a
man thrown with him in a train could scarcely fail to be engaged by
him in talk, but a student would never regard him as academical.
Yet he had that fibre in him that order always existed in his
class-room. I do not remember that he ever addressed me in
language; at the least sign of unrest, his eye would fall on me and
I was quelled.
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