1883 AT MILFORD 63 



state of alarm from a cursed blundering telegram which led me 

 to believe that Leonard (you know he got his first class to our 

 great joy) who had left for the continent on Saturday, was ill 

 or had had an accident. 



It was indeed a hurried journey. On receipt of the 

 telegram, he rushed to Victoria only to miss the night mail. 

 The booking-clerk suggested that he should drive to London 

 Bridge, take train to Lewes, and thence take a fly to New- 

 haven, where he ought to catch a later boat. The problem 

 was to catch the London Bridge train. There was barely 

 a quarter of an hour, but thanks to a good horse and the 

 Sunday absence of traffic, the thing was done, establishing, 

 I believe, what the modern mind delights in, a record in 

 cab-driving. Happily the anxiety at not finding his son in 

 Paris was soon allayed by another telegram from home, 

 where his son-in-law, the innocent sender of the original 

 message, had meanwhile arrived. He writes to Sir M. 

 Foster : — 



Judging by my scrawl, which is worse than usual, I should 

 say the anxiety had left its mark, but I am none the worse 

 otherwise. 



This was indeed the case. Other letters to Sir M. Foster 

 show that he was unusually well, perhaps because he was 

 really making holiday to some extent. Thus on August 

 16, he writes : — • 



This is a lovely country, and I have been reading novels and 

 walking about for the last four days. I must be all right, wind 

 and limb, for I walked over twenty miles the day before yester- 

 day, and except a blister on one heel, was none the worse. 



And again on September 12 : — 



Have been very lazy lately, which means that I have done a 

 great many things that I need not have done, and have left un- 

 done those which I ought to have done. Nowadays that seems 

 to me to be the real definition of a holiday. 



For once he was not doing very much holiday work, 

 though he was filing at the Rede Lecture to get it into shape 

 for publication. The examinations for the Science and Art 



