Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1888-01-26
BY ONE, BY TWO AND BY
THREE.
TEMPLE BAR.

tiiat nIst came 10 KNOW angus MAC
bane. We met casually, as under.
graduates do, at the breakfast table
of mutual friend, or rather acquaint-
ance, and | remember being struck
by the odd, cynical remarks my neigh
Dor threw out at rare intervals, as he
Watched the aTGument. We had started,
about Heaven knows what or what
not, and were maintaining on either
side with the boundless confidence
and almost boundless ignorance Pc
culiar to freshmen. l seem to see
him now, leaning back after the meal
in a deep armchair, with his hosts
cat purring her contentment on his
knee. He never looked at the semi
circle Of disputants round the fire,
but blew beautiful rings Of cigarette
smoke into the air, or gazed with a
critical expression, under half shut
lids, at the photographs of actresses
forming a galaxy Of popular beauty
above the mantelpiece. Then he
would emit some sentence, sometimes
sensible, oftener wildly nonsensical !;
but always original, unexpected-a
stone dropped with splash and a
ripple into the stream Of conversa-
tion.
| do not think that he showed any
very particular power of mind at the
breakfast party or indeed afterward.
What made one notice him was the
faint aroma of oddity that seemed to
cling to him, and all his ways and do
ings. He was incalculable, indefna-
ble; this was what made a good many
dislike him, and made me with one or
two others, conceive queer liking
for him. | always had a taste, secret
or confessed for those delicate degrees
of oddity which require a certain
natural bent to appreciate them at all.
Extravaganza of any kind commands
notice and compels a choice between
admiration and contempt; moreover,
1t generally (and not least at uni
versity) invites imitation. No one
ever either admired or despised Mac
bane, as far as l know and no one
could ever have initiated him. The
singularity lay rather in the man him
self than in any special habit. For
Macbane was not definablv different
from other young men. He was of
medium height, slightly made, but
not spare his face had hardly any
color, and his hair and moustache
were light. His eyes wero of a tint
difficult to define-sometimes gray,
sometimes greenish; and he had
trick of keeping them half shut and
and of looking away from any one
who was with him. This popularity
Is popularity supposed to be the sign
of knave in his case it was mere.
ly part of the mans general oddity,
and did not create any special dis
trust.
Our acquaintance thus casually be-
gun, rirened into a strange sort of
friendship. Macbane and saw very
little OF each other we did not talk
much, nor so for walks and rows to-
sether, nor contide to each other our
doings or plans as friends are sup
posed to do. On rainy afternoons
would stroll round to his rooms and
enter to find him generally seated be
fore the fire carressing his cat. We
did not greet each other, but l gen.
orally took up one of the numerous
strange and rare books that he con-
trived to accumulate, though he spent
very little money. This I would read
occasionally dropping a remark which
he would answer with some cynical,
curt sentence aud then both of Us re-
lapsed into silence. Tea would be
made and drunk, and We sometimes
sat thus till dinner time, or later.
Yet though l always felt as If I bored
Machane, still went to his rooms,
and when l did not so for sometime
he would generally with an air Of ex-
treme lassitude and reluctancy, come
round to my quarters, there to sit and
smoke and turn over NY books in
much the same way as l did when
visited him.
Angus Macbane never told me any,
taiug much about himself or his fam
lily II; he was one Of the most reticent
OF mortalS All he ever did in that
way was to say once in an abrupt
manner that some of his ancestors had
been executed for witchcraft and
when vented some of the usual
commonplAees on the barbarous igne-
rance and cruelty Of those times he