The pessimistic reports of my condition which have got into the papers may be giving you unnecessary alarm for the condition of your old comrade. So I send a line to tell you the exact state of affairs.
There is kidney mischief going on—and it is accompanied by very distressing attacks of nausea and vomiting, which sometimes last for hours and make life a burden.
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:—