Home Life 



overbore his adversary, and, even if it did not convince 

 him, left him without any effective reply. This, too, had a 

 good deal to do, I am disposed to conjecture, with another 

 very noticeable characteristic of his which often came out 

 in conversation, and that was his apparently unfailing 

 confidence in the goodness of human nature. No man nor 

 woman but he took to be in the main honest and truthful, 

 and no amount of disappointment — not even losses of money 

 and property incurred through this faith in others' virtues — 

 had the effect of altering this mental habit of his. 



His intellectual interests were very widely extended, 

 and he once confessed to me that they were agreeably 

 stimulated by novelty and opposition. An uphill fight in 

 an unpopular cause, for preference a thoroughly unpopular 

 one, or any argument in favour of a generally despised 

 thesis, had charms for him that he could not resist. In 

 his later years, especially, the prospect of writing a new 

 book, great or small, upon any one of his favourite sub- 

 jects always acted upon him like a tonic, as much so as 

 did the project of building a new house and laying out a 

 new garden. And in all this his sunny optimism and his 

 unfailing confidence in his own powers went far towards 

 securing him success. — J. W. S. 



" Land Nationalisation " (1882), '' Bad Times '^ (1885), 

 and " Darwinism '' (1889) were written at Godalming, also 

 the series of lectures which he gave in America in 1886-7 

 and at various towns in the British Isles. He also continued 

 to have examination papers' to correct each year — and a very 

 strenuous time that was. Our mother used to assist him in 

 this work, and also with the indexes of his books. 



We now began to make nature collections, in which he 

 took the keenest interest, many holidays and excursions 

 being arranged to further these engrossing pursuits. One 

 or two incidents occurred at '' Nutwood " which have left 

 clear impressions upon our minds. One day one of us 



' For many years he was Examiner in Physiography at South Kensington. 



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