this business of scientific inventions was sufficient explana-
tion.

Socially Mr. Thompson became quite a figure in the neighbourhood.
He attended regularly the Sunday evening services at the parish
church, and it must have been a matter of anxious concern to
dear Mr. Thompson that during his stay in Peckham the vicarage
was broken into by a burglar and an unsuccessful attempt made to
steal the communion plate which was kept there.

Mr. Thompson was generous in giving and punctual in paying. He
had his eccentricities. His love of birds and animals was
remarkable. Cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea-pigs, canaries, parrots
and cockatoos all found hospitality under his roof. It was
certainly eccentricity in Mr. Thompson that he should wear
different coloured wigs; and that his dark complexion should
suggest the use of walnut juice. His love of music was evinced
by the number of violins, banjoes, guitars, and other musical
instruments that adorned his drawing-room. Tea and music formed
the staple of the evening entertainments which Mr. and Mrs.
Thompson would give occasionally to friendly neighbours. Not
that the pleasures of conversation were neglected wholly in
favour of art. The host was a voluble and animated talker, his
face and body illustrating by appropriate twists and turns the
force of his comments. The Russo-Turkish war, then raging, was a
favourite theme of Mr. Thompson's. He asked, as we are still
asking, what Christianity and civilisation mean by countenancing
the horrors of war. He considered the British Government in the
highest degree guilty in supporting the cruel Turks, a people
whose sobriety seemed to him to be their only virtue, against the