CHAPTER VII
. 1875-1885.
Mr Jenkin's Illness - Captain Jenkin - The Golden Wedding - Death of Uncle John - Death of Mr. and Mrs. Austin - Illness and Death of the Captain - Death of Mrs. Jenkin - Effect on Fleeming - Telpherage - The End.
AND now I must resume my narrative for that melancholy business that concludes all human histories. In January of the year 1875, while Fleeming's sky was still unclouded, he was reading Smiles. 'I read my engineers' lives steadily,' he writes, 'but find biographies depressing. I suspect one reason to be that misfortunes and trials can be graphically described, but happiness and the causes of happiness either cannot be or are not. A grand new branch of literature opens to my view: a drama in which people begin in a poor way and end, after getting gradua
