However, strength keeps up very well considering, and of course all depends upon how the renal business goes.  At present I don’t feel at all like “sending in my checks,” and without being over sanguine I rather incline to think that my native toughness will get the best of it—­albuminuria or otherwise.

Ever your faithful friend,

T.H.H.

Misfortunes never come single.  My son-in-law, Eckersley, died of yellow fever the other day at San Salvador—­just as he was going to take up an appointment at Lima worth 1200 pounds a year.  Rachel and her three children have but the slenderest provision.

[The next two days there was a slight improvement but on the third morning the heart began to fail.  The great pain subdued by anaesthetics, he lingered on about seven hours, and at half-past three on June 29 passed away very quietly.

He was buried at Finchley, on July 4, beside his brother George and his little son Noel, under the shadow of the oak, which had grown up into a stately young tree from the little sapling it had been when the grave of his first-born was dug beneath it, five and thirty years before.

The funeral was of a private character.  An old friend, the Reverend Llewelyn Davies, came from Kirkby Lonsdale to read the service; the many friends who gathered at the grave-side were there as friends mourning the death of a friend, and all touched with the same sense of personal loss.

By his special direction, three lines from a poem written by his wife, were inscribed upon his tombstone—­lines inspired by his own robust conviction that, all question of the future apart, this life as it can be lived, pain, sorrow, and evil notwithstanding, is worth—­and well worth-living:—­

Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep;
For still He giveth His beloved sleep,
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.]

CHAPTER 3.15.

He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly, and force of character to do it; which of us dare ask for a higher summary of his life than that?

[Such was Huxley’s epitaph upon Henslow; it was the standard which he endeavoured to reach in his own life.  It is the expression of that passion for veracity which was perhaps his strongest characteristic; an uncompromising passion for truth in thought, which would admit no particle of self-deception, no assertion beyond what could be verified; for truth in act, perfect straightforwardness and sincerity, with complete disregard of personal consequences for uttering unpalatable fact.

Truthfulness, in his eyes, was the cardinal virtue, without which no stable society can exist.  Conviction, sincerity, he always respected, whether on his own side or against him.  Clever men, he would say, are as common as blackberries; the rare thing is to find a good one.  The lie from interested motives was only more hateful to him than the lie from self-delusion or foggy thinking.  With this he classed the “sin of faith,” as he called it; that form of credence which does not fulfil the duty of making a right use of reason; which prostitutes reason by giving assent to propositions which are neither self-evident nor adequately proved.