works of Miss Marie Corelli, Miss Braddon, Miss Elizabeth Glyn and
Madame Sarah Grand that would have astonished and flattered those
ladies enormously, and he loved nothing so much in his hours of
relaxation as to propound and answer difficult questions upon their
books. Tusher of King's was his ineffectual rival in this field,
their bouts were memorable and rarely other than glorious for
Codger; but then Tusher spread himself too much, he also undertook
to rehearse whole pages out of Bradshaw, and tell you with all the
changes how to get from any station to any station in Great Britain
by the nearest and cheapest routes. . . .

Codger lodged with a little deaf innocent old lady, Mrs. Araminta
Mergle, who was understood to be herself a very redoubtable
Character in the Gyp-Bedder class; about her he related quietly
absurd anecdotes. He displayed a marvellous invention in ascribing
to her plausible expressions of opinion entirely identical in import
with those of the Oxford and Harvard Pragmatists, against whom he
waged a fierce obscure war. . . .

It was Codger's function to teach me philosophy, philosophy! the
intimate wisdom of things. He dealt in a variety of Hegelian stuff
like nothing else in the world, but marvellously consistent with
itself. It was a wonderful web he spun out of that queer big active
childish brain that had never lusted nor hated nor grieved nor
feared nor passionately loved,--a web of iridescent threads. He had
luminous final theories about Love and Death and Immortality, odd
matters they seemed for him to think about! and all his woven
thoughts lay across my perception of the realities of things, as
flimsy and irrelevant and clever and beautiful, oh!--as a dew-wet
spider's web slung in the morning sunshine across the black mouth of