CORRESPONDENCE, 1867-70. 393 



external. He suddenly turned to me and said, ' De Morgan, my 1869. 

 wife is often with me.' I was astonished, not at the phenomenon, 

 but at his being the recipient. ' Often ? ' said I. ' Every even- 

 ing,' said he, 'and oftener.' ' Do you see her? ' said I. * No,' 

 said he, ' but I feel her presence. 1 By these three words hangs 

 a long tale. 



With kind regards to your family, 



Yours sincerely, 



A. DE MORGAN. 



To Rev. W. Heald. 



August 21, 1869. 



MY DEAR HEALD, I think I shall be able to keep up the 

 institution of a summer letter, though I may not be so long as 

 usual. It is the forty-fourth observance. 



You think, one letter of yours says, that I am feeling the 

 effects of hard work ; in fact, that I have been working too hard. 

 Rid your mind of the idea. I have never been hard working, 

 but I have been very continuously at work. I have never sought 

 relaxation. And why? Because it would have killed me. Amuse- 

 ment is real hard work to me. To relax is to forage about the 

 books with no particular object, and not bound to go on with 

 anything. 



You remember that my amusement used to be Berkeley and 

 the like. Quite true. I did with Trinity College library what 

 I afterwards did with my own I foraged for relaxation. I 

 used to shock you with my reading of Voltaire, who existed in 

 that library in about eighty quarto volumes. So you called me 

 an atheist vagabond, fancying that Yoltaire was an atheist : he 

 was, in fact, theistic to bigotry, and anti-revolutionist to the same 

 extent. 



I read an enormous deal of fiction all I could get hold of 

 so my amusement was not all philosophical. I have never worked 

 hard never got so far as a headache. If I felt tired I left off. 



My illness is well enough explained by the following chain of 

 events. 



1866. Discovery that University College was going to betray 

 its principles, and abandonment of the place in 1867. 



1867. Long illness and death of my second son, with all the 

 anxiety occurring during the turmoil of the College affair. In 

 the meanwhile my third son had taken refuge from illness on 

 board ship, and was away for eighteen months in very fluctuating 



