"Place at home and abroad you most admire? Clovelly. "Favorite reminiscence? July 6, 1839. "Favorite occupation? Doing nothing. "Favorite amusement? Sleeping. "What do you dislike most? Any sort of work. "Favorite topics of conversation? Whatever my companion happens to be talking about. "And those you dislike most? My own thoughts. "Your ambition? To die. "Your ideal? The One ideal, "Your hobby? Fancying I know anything. "The virtue you most admire? Truth. "The vice to which you are most lenient? All except lying. "Your favorite motto or proverb? 'Be strong.' "CHARLES KINGSLEY.” His year closed at Eversley with his three children round him, his eldest daughter having returned safe from a long visit to her brother in Colorado, and a perilous journey through Mexico, with him and some American friends who were 'prospecting" for the carrying on through the heart of Mexico of the narrow-gauge railway lately built in Colorado. The report made by his son on this survey and the prospects it seemed to hold out for his advancement were a great pride and joy to Mr. Kingsley. It had been a year of hard work, and owing to the increasing infirmities of his mother, who was in her 85th year, and lived with him, he had scarcely left A Poem 339 home for more than a few days. The three months now at Chester and the four annual sermons at Windsor, Sandringham, Whitehall, and St. James's made him unwilling to give up his Eversley people for a single Sunday. So that he had no intermission of toil; indeed, since he returned from the West Indies, nearly three years before, he had preached every Sunday once if not twice. Towards winter his mother's dangerous illness and other anxieties weighed heavily on him; they were anxieties which, however, never touched the sacred innermost circle of his home. "I am blessed in all my children, thank God," he writes, to a friend, who had lost his wife; "and though my beloved one is still with me, and all in all to me, yet I have my sorrows, such as God grant you may never taste." Once again before clouds thickened, his heart had bubbled up into song, and after the last meet of the fox-hounds in front of Bramshill House at which he was ever present a sight he dearly into his wife's loved hands: he put these verses November 6, 1872. "THE DELECTABLE DAY. "The boy on the famous grey pony "The walk to the Meet' with fair children "The afternoon's wander to windward, "The climb homeward by park and by moorland And through the fir forests again, While the southwest wind roars in the gloaming "And at night the septette of Beethoven, "Ah, God! a poor soul can but thank Thee Though the fury, the fool, and the swindler, CHAPTER XXVII 1873-4 AGED 54-5 -CON SERMONS IN HARROW-ON-THE-HILL-CANONRY OF WESTMINSTER - ILLNESS - ROCKY MOUNTAINS AND COLORADO SPRINGS-LAST POEM RETURN HOME. "One of the kind wishes expressed for me is a long life. Let anything be asked for me except that. Let us live hard, work hard, go a good pace, get to our journey's end as soon as possible - then let the post-horse get his shoulder out of the collar. . . . I have lived long enough to feel, like the old post-horse, very thankful as the end draws near. . . . Long life is the last thing that I desire. It may be that, as one grows older, one acquires more and more the painful consciousness of the difference between what ought to be done and what can be done, and sits down more quietly when one gets the wrong side of fifty, to let others start up to do for us things we cannot do for ourselves. But it is the highest pleasure that a man can have who has (to his own exceeding comfort) turned down the hill at last, to believe that younger spirits will rise up after him, and catch the lamp of Truth, as in the old lamp-bearing race of Greece, out of his hand before it expires, and carry it on to the goal with swifter and more even feet. "C. K." (Speech at the Lotus Club, New York, February, 1874.) OME months of this year were spent at Har SOM row, where his youngest son was at school; a change to high ground having been recommended for some of his family, for which the Bishop gave him leave of non-residence; but he went regularly for his Sundays to Eversley, and helped to prepare the candidates for confirmation. While at Harrow, he received this letter from Mr. Gladstone: "I have to propose to you, with the sanction of her Majesty, that, in lieu of your canonry at Chester, you should accept the vacant stall in Westminster Abbey. I am sorry to injure the people of Chester; but I must sincerely hope your voice will be heard within the Abbey, and in your own right." "This is good news indeed," writes his friend Dean Stanley, from Westminster. "I had entertained some hope, but it was beginning to fade away. . . . How many waters, as the French say, have run under the bridge since we first met at Exeter College, many years ago. What a meeting of those waters here, and what a world of interest have they now to run through from this happy confluence ! " There was a strong battle in his heart between the grief of giving up Chester and the joy of belonging to the great Abbey, a position which included among many advantages the blessing he had long craved for, of laying down his pen as a compulsory source of income, at once and for all, and devoting his remaining writing powers and strength to sermons alone. He had just written to a member of his scientific class in Chester to say how he longed for May 1, to be back again among them. And a few days later he writes: "The programme of your Society for the year makes me at once proud and envious. For now I have to tell you that I have just accepted the vacant stall at West |