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CHAPTER VIII. 



REMINISCENCES OF "THE DRUID." 



By his Eldest Son, Henry Sydenham Dixon. 



I»r£& 





HOUGH it may seem singular 

 that his children — and parti- 

 cularly his eldest son, who 

 from 1866 to 1870, was asso- 

 ciated with him in a certain amount of his 

 newspaper work — can contribute so little to 

 a biography of " The Druid," the causes 

 are not far to seek. In the first place, his 

 health was so bad during the last few years 

 of his life, that he was constantly confined 

 to his room for weeks together, during which 

 time we saw very little of him ; in the 

 second, during his rare periods of compara- 

 tive convalescence, he was generally travel- 

 ling to collect materials for whatever book 

 he happened to have in hand at the time ; 

 and, in the third, his absent-mindedness had 



