I remember he picked up the book I had brought off that morning to read in the train--the second volume of Hazlitt's _Essays_, the last of my English classics--and discoursed so wisely about books that I wished I had spent more time in his company at Biggleswick.
'Hazlitt was the academic Radical of his day,' he said.

'He is always lashing himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses he has never encountered in person.

Men who are up against the real thing save their breath for action.' That gave me my cue to tell him about my journey to the North.

I said I had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I wanted to see industrial life at close quarters.

'Otherwise I might become like Hazlitt,' I said.
He was very interested and encouraging.