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84   MEMORIES OF MY LIFE

or again in service as an officer in the Militia. My elder brother Darwin was a great favourite among his friends from his early life onwards. He used me as his fag when I was a boy, and taught me to be fairly smart. I imbibed many common-sense maxims from him, but our ideals of life differed to an almost absurd degree : he had not the slightest care for literature or science, and I had no taste for country pursuits. Our differences of temperament became more marked the older we grew. These few remarks, in connection with what has previously been said, will give a supplementary idea of what my surroundings had been during much of my boyhood. It was

now the year 1845, when I was twenty-three years

old, and the acuteness of my late bereavement had passed away.

After the necessary legal business was finished, the members of the family gradually adapted themselves to their new conditions. My sister Emma lived thenceforth with my mother, whose house, whether at Claverdon or Leamington, I always thought of as "home." Emma soon became my loving and beloved correspondent, continuing so during the remaining seventy years of her long life, ever devoted to my interests and keenly sympathetic. I was indeed fortunate in possessing such an unselfish and affectionate sister. My sister Litcy was in suffering health, from the results of acute rheumatic fever when a child, and lived only three years longer. My sisters Bessy and Adele were then either married or about to be married; my eldest brother Darwin was married and living with his young wife and her mother, Mrs. Philips, at her country house, called