My wife and I send our warmest good wishes to your future wife and yourself. I cannot but think that those who are parted from us, if they have cognisance of what goes on in this world, must rejoice over everything that renders life better and brighter for the sojourners in it— especially of those who are dear to them. At least, that would be my feeling.
Please commend us to Miss —, and beg her not to put us on the "Index," because we count ourselves among your oldest and warmest friends.
[To his daughter, Mrs. Roller:—]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, May 5, 1892.
It was very pleasant to get your birthday letter and the photograph, which is charming.
The love you children show us, warms our old age better than the sun.
For myself the sting of remembering troops of follies and errors, is best alleviated by the thought that they may make me better able to help those who have to go through like experiences, and who are so dear to me that I would willingly pay an even heavier price, to be of use. Depend upon it, that confounded "just man who needed no repentance" was a very poor sort of a father. But perhaps his daughters were "just women" of the same type; and the family circle as warm as the interior of an ice-pail.
[A certain artist, who wanted to have Huxley sit to him, tried to manage the matter through his son-in-law, Hon. J. Collier, to whom the following is addressed:—]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 27, 1892.
My dear Jack,