nothing. Our poor boy had the rare case of second rash and sore throat...;
and, as if this was not enough, a most serious attack of erysipelas, with
typhoid symptoms. I despaired of his life; but this evening he has eaten
one mouthful, and I think has passed the crisis. He has lived on port wine
every three-quarters of an hour, day and night. This evening, to our
astonishment, he asked whether his stamps were safe, and I told him of one
sent by you, and that he should see it to-morrow. He answered, "I should
awfully like to see it now"; so with difficulty he opened his eyelids and
glanced at it, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, said, "All right."
Children are one's greatest happiness, but often and often a still greater
misery. A man of science ought to have none--perhaps not a wife; for then
there would be nothing in this wide world worth caring for, and a man might
(whether he could is another question) work away like a Trojan. I hope in
a few days to get my brains in order, and then I will pick out all your
orchid letters, and return them in hopes of your making use of them...

Of all the carpenters for knocking the right nail on the head, you are the
very best; no one else has perceived that my chief interest in my orchid
book has been that it was a "flank movement" on the enemy. I live in such
solitude that I hear nothing, and have no idea to what you allude about
Bentham and the orchids and species. But I must enquire.

By the way, one of my chief enemies (the sole one who has annoyed me),
namely Owen, I hear has been lecturing on birds; and admits that all have
descended from one, and advances as his own idea that the oceanic wingless
birds have lost their wings by gradual disuse. He never alludes to me, or
only with bitter sneers, and coupled with Buffon and the "Vestiges."

Well, it has been an amusement to me this first evening, scribbling as
egotistically as usual about myself and my doings; so you must forgive me,