The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

422
University
LIFE OF SIR ROWLAND HILL.
of Oxford had made him a Doctor of
Laws, and the Queen had made him a Knight Commander
of the Bath. Before many years had passed
the City of London was to give him its freedom, and
Westminster Abbey a grave. The Asylums Board
cared for none of those things. Public benefactors
and public honours did not enter into its world. It
knew of nothing but ratepayers. But ratepayers, it
should have remembered, are after all only men, and
men, in these islands at least, are neither ungrateful
nor pitiless.
There was a striking regularity in the order of his
household. Everything went on almost as if by clock-
work. He asked me one day whether I had ever
noticed that the sound of a bell was scarcely ever
heard in his house, save when someone came to the
hall-door. He was, he said, strictly punctual himself,
and he had trained his servants to habits of the
strictest punctuality. He could afford, I knew, to take
some trouble with them, for they were very slow to leave
his service. His visitors saw year after year the best
proof of a good master in the familiar faces of those
by whom he was served. As everything was done at
its appointed time, there was no need for a bell to
be rung. His meals, his medicine, everything was
brought to the exact minute. No one was summoned,
for no one was ever late. In the days when he was
still strong enough to drive out, he had been often
troubled by the unpunctuality of his coachman :
" I advised him to aim at being five minutes before the appointed
time. Of course I only advised this to have ordered it would
merely have changed the appointed hour. Just as the allowance of
five minutes' grace at the Post Office simply alters the hour of
attendance from 10.0 to 10.5 a.m., and does nothing to secure
punctuality.