And if, as we are promised, there are to be many mansions in the realms above, I trust it is not impious to hope that one will be situated in some Elysian Plymouth Grove, exact in every detail to the dear original. For it must have the same semi-circular drive approaching its old-fashioned portico, and the steps must be a trifle steep by which you reach the shuttered door, and I must be permitted to be young again, unknown and obscure, and to drive up in a heavenly hired four-wheeled cab, so that when the door is opened by some neat angel maid-servant I may feel fully again the honour that is done me. Everything must be in its place in the beloved drawing-room, for each book and picture, and piece of furniture had its own welcome for you, and though, of course, I should like to meet the shade of Charlotte Brontë as well as some of those noted men and women who were visitors in my day, yet all I shall really wish for is the Manchester welcome the good ladies gave me twenty-five years ago. For if heaven is to be a success, there must be kind hostesses to welcome shy, awkward, unknown, youthful persons like myself, and make us at ease and at home in the presence of the great ones. And though I write this as a nonsense dream, I do it because I find it easier to express truth in that form. And it is certainly true that the good ladies of Plymouth Grove made Manchester for me and mine as they did for so many toilers of all degrees, a holier and better place.
Falkner Blair was another kind friend who discovered me when I first went to Manchester, and helped by his kindly greeting to make its skies blue for me and its sun to shine on me. He was the leader among those juniors who practised mainly in the Crown Court, and was afterwards a judge in India. He and Arnold were good friends, though they had little but Oxford in common――Oxford has its advantages――and Blair called Arnold “the Don” and Arnold nicknamed Blair “the Agreeable Rattle.”
For I remember feeling very lonely wandering about the Courts in those early days, when Falkner Blair came up to me and said, “Is your name Parry? Well, come up and take the dogs for a walk and have some dinner.” It appeared I had met some relations of his, but any pretext was good enough for Blair to open his house to a newcomer and see what he was like, and he was a real friend to his juniors.