I hope that your cold is better.--Your very truly, CHAS. S. PARNELL. HOUSE OF COMMONS, _Thursday night, July_ 22, 1881. MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,--I have received both your very kind letters quite safely, and am looking forward to seeing you somewhere or somehow to-morrow. I am very much troubled at everything you have to undergo, and trust that it will not last long.--Yours always, CHAS. S. PARNELL. I am still quite well. Thank you very much, for enclosure. WESTMINSTER PALACE HOTEL, VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, S.W. _Sunday evening, July_ 25, 1881. MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,---I write to ask you to send my travelling cap, if it is at Eltham, to me here, as I may have to go over to Paris or Boulogne some day this week. I hope your eyes are quite well again and that you are enjoying these cool times. I have been very lonely all to-day and yesterday. Have not seen anyone that I know.--Yours always, CHAS. S. PARNELL. _July_ 26, 1881. MY DEAR MRS. O'SHEA,--I am still staying at the same address, and have postponed going to France, so you need not send my cap.--Yours always, CHAS. S. PARNELL. {108} CHAPTER XIII ASTRONOMY, "SEDITION," AND ARREST "_--and there is one stirring hour ... when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere.... Do the stars rain down an influence?_"--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. During his leisure moments at Eltham Mr. Parnell took up the study of astronomy with the vigour that always characterized him when he was interested in a subject. He had picked out from my bookshelf a book of stars--one of Sir Robert Ball's, I believe, that I had bought at random one day, and became at once interested. From the teaching of an old friend of my father's I had a fairly good knowledge of astronomy, and, though by no means well up in the latest research and discoveries, I was able to tell him much of the stellar systems that was new to him. Finding how he devoured the little book of Sir Robert Ball's, I got several of the latter's interesting works for him, besides Herschel's. Then Mr. Parnell told me of a magnificent telescope he had at Avondale, and sent for it. When this arrived he sent for a few sacks of Portland cement, with which he made a pedestal in my garden, and himself mounted the telescope upon it. He made an ingenious arrangement whereby the slightest touch would tilt the telescope to the desired angle, and we spent many nights, he and I, watching the stars and following the courses of the planets till they faded in the dawn. Then he thought of how near to us was the Observatory at Greenwich, and got a permit to {109} go over the Observatory. After that, on the days when my aunt had her readers with her, I used to accompany him to the Observatory, where we spent many hours.