"I begin to-morrow to write my book, and as I have a large party of men (110) waiting for me at Tette, and I promised to join them in April next, you will see I shall have enough to do to get over my work here before the end of the month.... Many thanks for all the kind things you said at the Cape Town meeting. Here they laud me till I shut my eyes, for only trying to do my duty. They ought to vote thanks to the Boers who set me free to discover the fine new country. They were determined to shut the country, and I was determined to open it. They boasted to the Portuguese that they had expelled two missionaries, and outwitted themselves rather. I got the gold medal, as you predicted, and the freedom of the town of Hamilton, which insures me protection from the payment of jail fees if put in prison!" In writing his book, he sometimes worked in the house of a friend, but generally in a London or suburban lodging, often with his children about him, and all their noise; for, as in the Blantyre mill, he could abstract his attention from sounds of whatever kind, and go on calmly with his work. Busy though he was, this must have been one of the happiest times in his life. Some of his children still remember his walks and romps with them in the Barnet woods, near which they lived part of the time--how he would suddenly plunge into the ferny thicket, and set them looking for him, as people looked for him afterward when he disappeared in Africa, coming out all at once at some unexpected corner of the thicket. One of his greatest troubles was the penny post. People used to ask him the most frivolous questions. At first he struggled to answer them, but in a few weeks he had to give this up in despair. The simplicity of his heart is seen in the childlike joy with which he welcomes the early products of the spring. He writes to Mr. Maclear that, one day at Professor Owen's, they had "seen daisies, primroses, hawthorns, and robin-redbreasts. Does not Mrs. Maclear envy us? It was so pleasant." But a better idea of his mode of life at home will be conveyed by the notes of some of the friends with whom he stayed. For that purpose, we resume the recollections of Dr. Risdon Bennett: