80 SIR WILLIAM FLOWER 



tall grave visitor there, who not only accepted one of the daisy 

 chains we had just made, but, to my sister's satisfaction, walked 

 out with it round his neck. That was Charles Kingsley. 



Flower's holidays were always shared with his 

 family. Sometimes his friends used to ask, rather 

 dubiously, ** Oh, but what did you do ? " He always 

 found that his amusements and those of the boys 

 and girls happened to be very much the same. 

 His second daughter, Vera, now the wife of Colonel 

 Biddulph, of Rathrobin, King's Co., writes character- 

 istically of their younger days with her father : — 



I have just been reading the life of a distinguished bishop, 

 and am struck by the fact that in it his wife and family are never 

 mentioned unless it is in case of illness and in letters of 

 condolence, which gives an unpleasant impression that they were 

 always ailing ! Now in Sir James P aget's life there are constant 

 allusions to their happy family circle, which I think gives a much 

 truer impression — certainly in his case — of what his daily life was. 

 We constantly went away with our father and mother for short 

 visits to the country, and generally for a holiday with them at 

 Easter. But it was the six weeks in August and September that 

 we most enjoyed, and most 'keenly looked forward to. It was 

 generally on Trinity Sunday that our father, with our mother by 

 his side, used to unfold some delightful plan for the summer 

 holiday. Sometimes it was a tour abroad. Sometimes it was 

 to take a country house in an interesting part of England or 

 Wales. One summer we spent in the old "Cliff House" at 

 Felixstowe, before railways made it crowded. Close by were 

 the red crag cliffs, full of fossils of a comparatively recent 

 date, in which all kinds of remains of fishes, shells, cetacea, 

 and other creatures were in perfect preservation, and easily 

 detached and collected. With him we made a fine collection 

 of sharks' and other teeth, and crag animals generally. Another 

 year a house was taken near Dartmoor. There we had the whole 



