For several years his eyesight has been failing, an affliction which he has borne with Christian courage and cheerfulness and keeps right on at his beloved work.

He has been devoted to photography in which avocation he has been most successful.  His wife told me they were glad to accept his call to New York as he had almost filled every room in their house with his various collections.  One can appreciate this when he sees a card displayed on the door of Doctor Bolles’s sanctum bearing this motto: 

“A man is known by the Trumpery he keeps.”

He has received many honorary degrees, but his present triumph over what would crush the ambition of most men is greater than all else.

* * * * *

Exquisite nonsense is a rare thing, but when found how delicious it is!  I found a letter from a reverend friend who might be an American Sidney Smith if he chose, and I am going to let you enjoy it; it was written years ago.

Speaking of the “Purple and Gold,” he says: 

I should make also better acknowledgments than my thanks.  But what can I do?  My volume on The Millimetric Study of the Tail of the Greek Delta, in the MSS. of the Sixth Century, is entirely out of print; and until its re-issue by the Seaside Library I cannot forward a copy.  Then my essay, “Infantile Diseases of the Earthworm” is in Berlin for translation, as it is to be issued at the same time in Germany and the United States.  “The Moral Regeneration of the Rat,” and “Intellectual Idiosyncracies of Twin Clams,” are resting till I can get up my Sanscrit and Arabic, for I wish these researches to be exhaustive.

He added two poems which I am not selfish enough to keep to myself.

GOLDEN ROD

O!  Golden Rod!  Thou garish, gorgeous gush
Of passion that consumes hot summer’s heart! 
O! yellowest yolk of love! in yearly hush
I stand, awe sobered, at thy burning bush
Of Glory, glossed with lustrous and illustrious art,
And moan, why poor, so poor in purse and brain I am,
While thou into thy trusting treasury dost seem to cram
Australia, California, Sinai and Siam.

And the other such a capital burlesque of the modern English School with its unintelligible parentheses: 

ASTER

I kissed her all day on her red, red mouth
(Cats, cradles and trilobites!  Love is the master!)
Too utterly torrid, a sweet, spicy South
(Of compositae, fairest the Aster.)
Stars shone on our kisses—­the moon blushed warm
(Ursa major or minor, Pollux and Castor!)

How long the homeward!  And where was my arm? 
(Crushed, crushed at her waist was the Aster!)

No one kisses me now—­my winter has come: 
(To ice turns fortune when once you have passed her.)
I long for the angels to beckon me home (hum)
(For dead, deader, deadest, the Aster!)

[Illustration:  PINES AND SILVER BIRCHES]