Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/54



We should be glad, replies Teixeira, if this application could come up again in say a fortnights' time.

A. T. Trade Clearing House.

When next I was summoned for duty as a special constable, the application was submitted again; and Teixeira dined with me at the Reform Club. Later in the year, though he had been warned by William Campbell, the greatest friend of his middle years, that a man who laughed so much would never be admitted to membership, I was allowed to propose him as a candidate; and from the day of his election he became one of the most popular figures both in the card-room and in the south-east corner of the big smoking-room, where his most intimate associates gathered.

His hours of work, to which the first stanza refers, have already been mentioned; his methods call for a word or two of description. The library in Cheltenham Terrace looked out over the Duke of York's School and was lined with book-cases wherever windows,