Page:The life and letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton bt. (IA lifelettersofsi00port).pdf/167

 so agreeably through this mistaken conviction I feel peculiarly unfitted to criticize it.

Injuries were forgiven and forgotten with the setting of the sun, and the perpetrator merely became "that poor fellow," though less amiable members of H. H.'s circle could doubtless have found more suitable designations. Like all public men, H. H. had his enemies; but I think he had fewer than most. Some wise man once wrote you cannot be too careful in the choice of your enemies," but it is perhaps truer to say he who never made an "enemy never made anything else."

His large charity went out m the words of Ian Maclaren, whose books he dearly loved, "Be pitiful, for we are all of us fighting a hard battle." Still it must be recorded that there was one class of mind, for which he had no mercy—the obstructionistic, and of whose ultimate destination he, at least, had no doubt. Sheer laziness, the generating factor of an Obstructionist, can defeat and overthrow the best laid schemes of the greatest genius. To an ObstructtionistObstructionist [sic] every philanthropic movement represents but an extra signing of documents, every Arctic or Tropical Exploration means only an extra search for a mislaid compass, or an order for a stores catalogue. "They have no imagination," H. H. would say, implying utter and irrevocable condemnation. There was a curious phrase he would frequently employ when urging forward the Obstructionist faster along the "Primrose path of dalliance." "Show a little public spirit," was his formula, addressed indescriminatelyindiscriminately [sic] to governing bodies, taxi-drivers, lift-boys, and lesser fry who impede progress.

H. H. could differentiate between the individual