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incidentally helped themselves to liberal portions of Clarke’s Vini Gallaci or smoked his cigars without money and without price. There were some rare characters who gathered around that old stove, some queer personalities, and Porter caught them and transferred them to paper by both pen and pencil in an illustrated comedy satire that was his first public literary and artistic effort.

“When this was read and shown around the stove the picture was so true to life and caught the peculiarities of the dramatis personœ so aptly it was some time before the young playwright was on speaking terms with some of his old friends. ‘Alias Jimmy Valentine’s’ hit^[1] is history now, but I doubt if at any time there was a more genuine tribute to Porter’s ability than from the audience around the old stove, behind the prescription counter nearly thirty years ago.

“In those days Sunday was a day of rest, and Porter with a friend would spend the long afternoons out on some sunny hillside sheltered from the wind by the thick brown broom sedge, lying on their backs gazing up into the blue sky dreaming, planning, talking, or turning to their books, reading. He was an ardent lover of God’s great out-of-doors, a dreamer, a thinker, and a constant reader. He was such a man—true-hearted and steadfast to those he cared for, as gentle and sensitive as a woman, retiring to a fault, pure, clean, and honourable.”