xv HOME LIFE AND TRAVELS 369 



the host and hostess, which in my memory I have never 

 seen equalled. 



The years 1884 and 1885 were big with fate for all 

 of us. In the first place came our trip to Canada and 

 the States to which I have already referred. Of course 

 I visited Harvard University, and made friends with 

 its distinguished President, Eliot, whom I had already 

 met in England, and also saw the Boston Technical 

 Institute and Yale University, where I renewed my 

 friendship with Brush. Since that date I regret I have 

 not again visited the States, although I had an invitation 

 to be present at a Jubilee at Yale when they offered me 

 an honorary degree ; I should have much liked to 

 see the evidence, borne in upon all sides, as to the 

 enormous progress made in educational matters of all 

 kinds in America during the last twenty years. 



Our dear son Edmund was also keenly interested in 

 all he saw and learnt, and whilst my wife and I remained 

 in the East he, with our friend, Sir Swire Smith, made 

 a long excursion to the West as far as Winnipeg, and 

 contributed some really striking articles descriptive of 

 his tour to the Manchester Examiner. He possessed 

 in high degree the literary faculty of the family, but he 

 had no special scientific tastes ; in fact I am the " sport " 

 of the family, the only other one of my Roscoe relatives 

 who exhibited scientific ability being my cousin, the 

 late Stanley Jevons, for whom in his early years in 

 Manchester my mother made a home. 



Returning homeward, we waited for more than a 

 week in New York, where the temperature was from 

 95 to 100 degrees, and all of us, especially our son, 

 suffered considerably in consequence, but the fresh air 

 of the Atlantic seemed to drive all evil effects away. 

 Edmund then returned to Magdalen, Oxford, where he 

 had already spent a year, and I had the pleasure of 



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