habit through life. His feats of memory indeed were marvelous. Open a book of the Shaksperian plays anywhere and read a line and he would almost surely give you the next, and upon the instant. Recite to him any passage from the Homeric poems, and from memory he would give you the varying English translations. Any phrase or any idea having its roots or resemblances in standard literature would bring from him a perfect flood of recitation, all from memory. I recall once, in describing to him the method of a certain orator that I remembered him as a schoolboy rendering heavily one of Webster's orations beginning: "Unborn ages and visions of glory crowd upon my soul," etc., etc. "Ah!" said Mr. Scott, "That's an old friend." And he proceeded to reel off from a poet I had never heard of, the original expression of which Webster's resounding exordium was a paraphrase. Whatever form of literature found in him especial appreciation became a fixed furniture of his mind. The plays of the earlier British dramatists in all their finer passages were as definitely in his mind and as available for immediate use as the worn maxims are familiar to most of us. He was an admirer of Burke and whole passages of his speeches he would recite offhand. In the course of every day in his office he would illustrate perhaps twenty situations by recalling some classic or standard utterance, always reciting it letter perfect. If he looked from his office window upon the moving crowd below, there would arise to his lips some quaint or wise passage apt to the circumstance. If anyone asked after his health he was more than likely to reply with a couplet. The writings of the great religious teachers of antiquity, even the jargon of the modern religious schools, were at his tongue's end. In his own writings he was not given to quotation, but one familiar with the world's literature might easily trace the genesis of many a thought and of a thousand turns of expression to the amazing storehouse of his memory.
Mr. Scott gave his mind to many subjects, but perhaps his most exhaustive study was within a sphere singularly removed from the range of his daily activities. I fancy that it will sur-
