* * * * *
Five minutes later Freddy-boy, half asleep, but wholly cheerful, was
borne on Thorndyke's shoulders into the private sitting-room of the
Black Horse Hotel. A shriek of joy saluted his entrance, and a shower of
maternal kisses brought him to the verge of suffocation. Finally, the
impulsive Mrs. Haldean, turning suddenly to Thorndyke, seized both his
hands, and for a moment I hoped that she was going to kiss him, too. But
he was spared, and I have not yet recovered from the disappointment.
III
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AT LARGE
Thorndyke was not a newspaper reader. He viewed with extreme disfavour
all scrappy and miscellaneous forms of literature, which, by presenting
a disorderly series of unrelated items of information, tended, as he
considered, to destroy the habit of consecutive mental effort.
"It is most important," he once remarked to me, "habitually to pursue a
definite train of thought, and to pursue it to a finish, instead of
flitting indolently from one uncompleted topic to another, as the
newspaper reader is so apt to do. Still, there is no harm in a daily
paper--so long as you don't read it.
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