We knew of your being in the Isle of Wight, and had said that we should have this year to drink your health in your absence. Rely on my being always ready and happy to renew our old friendship in the flesh. In the spirit it needs no renewal, because it has no break.
Ah, poor Mrs. White! A sad, sad story! It is better for poor White that that little churchyard by the sea received his ashes a while ago, than that he should have lived to this time.
My poor boy was on his way home from an up-country station, on sick leave. He had been very ill, but was not so at the time. He was talking to some brother-officers in the Calcutta hospital about his preparations for home, when he suddenly became excited, had a rush of blood from the mouth, and was dead. His brother Frank would arrive out at Calcutta, expecting to see him after six years, and he would have been dead a month.
My "working life" is resolving itself at the present into another book, in twenty green leaves. You work like a Trojan at Ventnor, but you do that everywhere; and that's why you are so young.
Mary and Georgina unite in kindest regard to you, and to Mrs. Knight, and to your daughters. So do I. And I am ever, my dear Knight,
Affectionately yours.
P.S.—Serene View! What a placid address!
Mr. Edmund Ollier.
"All the Year Round" Office, March, 1864.
EXTRACT.