xxv HOME LIFE 459 



You will have a son some day yourself, I suppose, and if you 

 do, I can wish you no greater satisfaction than to be able to say 

 that he has reached manhood without having given you a serious 

 anxiety, and that you can look forward with entire confidence 

 to his playing the man in the battle of life. I have tried to 

 make you feel your responsibilities and act independently as 

 early as possible — but, once for all, remember that I am not only 

 your father but your nearest friend, ready to help you in all 

 things reasonable, and perhaps in a few unreasonable. 



This domestic happiness which struck others so forcibly 

 was one of the vital realities of his existence. Without it 

 his quick spirit and nervous temperament could never have 

 endured the long and often embittered struggle — not merely 

 with equanimity, but with a constant growth of sympathy 

 for earnest humanity, which, in early days obscured from 

 view by the turmoil of strife, at length became apparent to 

 all as the tide of battle subsided. None realised more than 

 himself what the sustaining help and comradeship of mar- 

 ried life had wrought for him, alike in making his life worth 

 living and in making his life's work possible. Here he 

 found the pivot of his happiness and his strength ; here 

 he recognised to the full the care that took upon itself all 

 possible burdens and left his mind free for his greater 

 work. 



He had always a great tenderness for children. " One 

 of my earliest recollections of him," writes Jeffery Parker, 

 " is in connection with a letter he wrote to my father, on 

 the occasion of the death, in infancy, of one of my brothers. 

 ' Why,' he wrote, ' did you not tell us before that the child 

 was named after me, that we might have made his short life 

 happier by a toy or two.' I never saw a man more crushed 

 than he was during the dangerous illness of one of his 

 daughters, and he told me that, having then to make an 

 after-dinner speech, he broke down for the first time in his 

 life, and for one painful moment forgot where he was and 

 what he had to say. I can truly say that I never knew a 

 man whose way of speaking of his family, or whose manner 

 in his own home, was fuller of a noble, loving, and withal 

 playful courtesy." 



