At Paris I had the advice of a specialist in hip disease for Russie, and the plaster bandage was replaced by a wire envelope, which fitted the entire body and which made his transfer from vehicle to vehicle without any strain a matter of comparative ease.  But the poor child suffered the inevitable acute pains of active hip disease before anchylosis takes place, and he wasted visibly from the incessant pain.  He had been, when stricken in his seventh year, a boy of precocious strength and activity, a model of health and personal beauty, whom passersby in the streets stopped to look at, so that from the common people one often heard an exclamation of admiration, as from our English fellow passengers between Calais and Dover, who gathered round him as he lay in his wire cradle with murmurs of admiration, for the pallor which had begun to set in only made his beauty more refined and his color a more transparent rose and white.  In London we were warmly received by the Greeks who had been prominent in supporting the insurrection in Crete, and a testimonial was proposed for me of a piece of plate, for which £225 were subscribed, which as testimonial I declined to accept, but did accept on account of the debt which the Cretan committee of Boston owed me.  Here I met with great kindness, especially from the Greek consul-general, Mr. Spartali, and I then made the acquaintance of his daughter, who, two years later, became my wife.  The Rossettis, especially Christina, who had known Laura and Russie when the latter was a boy of two, were most thoughtful and kind, and I had some wheels put to Russie’s cage, so that his passion for seeing, which the incessant pain he was in never abated, could be indulged to a certain extent.  Miss Rossetti went with us to the Zoological Gardens to satisfy his passion for natural history, and so far as kindness could compensate for his helplessness he lacked nothing.  We sailed for New York and were met at landing by my brother Charles, who told me of the death of our mother, two weeks before.  Her last wish had been for my coming, and to be able to embrace our little Lisa, her namesake.  I had not seen her for seven years.

I had made preparations while in London, for the publication of a volume of photographs of the Acropolis of Athens, and, when I had left the children with their mother’s parents, I returned to London for a few weeks, to superintend the production of it.  The American medical man called in to treat Russie proved as great a quack as the Greek, and his case grew worse.  Finally he was sent to the hospital, from which he was, after a long treatment, sent back as incurable, and I was told that probably all I could do for him henceforward was to make death as easy as it might be.