228 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



honeymoon tour.' He had not been alone with 

 his wife * to speak of,' he added, since the birth 

 of his children. But now he was to enjoy the 

 society of her to whom he wrote, in these last days, 

 that she was his * Heaven on earth.' Now he was 

 to revisit Italy, and see all the pictures and the 

 buildings and the scenes that he admired so 

 warmly, and lay aside for a time the irritations 

 of his strenuous activity. Nor was this all. A 

 trifling operation was to restore his former light- 

 ness of foot ; and it was a renovated youth 

 that was to set forth upon this re-enacted honey- 

 moon. 



The end. The operation was performed ; it was of a 

 trifling character, it seemed to go well, no fear was 

 entertained ; and his wife was reading aloud to 

 him as he lay in bed, when she perceived him to 

 wander in his mind. It is doubtful if he ever 

 recovered a sure grasp upon the things of life ; 

 and he was still unconscious when he passed away, 

 June the twelfth, 1885, in the fifty-third year of 

 his age. He passed ; but something in his gallant 

 vitality had impressed itself upon his friends, 

 and still impresses. Not from one or two only, 

 but from many, I hear the same tale of how the 

 imagination refuses to accept our loss and in- 

 stinctively looks for his reappearing, and how 

 memory retains his voice and image like things 

 of yesterday. Others, the well-beloved too, 



