Not, therefore, an unlettered place, yet not pedantic, Edinburgh
will compare favourably with much larger cities. A hard and
disputatious element has been commented on by strangers: it would
not touch Fleeming, who was himself regarded, even in this
metropolis of disputation, as a thorny table-mate. To golf
unhappily he did not take, and golf is a cardinal virtue in the
city of the winds. Nor did he become an archer of the Queen's
Body-Guard, which is the Chiltern Hundreds of the distasted golfer.
He did not even frequent the Evening Club, where his colleague Tait
(in my day) was so punctual and so genial. So that in some ways he
stood outside of the lighter and kindlier life of his new home. I
should not like to say that he was generally popular; but there as
elsewhere, those who knew him well enough to love him, loved him
well. And he, upon his side, liked a place where a dinner party
was not of necessity unintellectual, and where men stood up to him
in argument.
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