| Description | Giving an account of their holiday with the McNeiles, after which they are returning to Dacca [Dhaka], with William stopping at Faridpur to hold circuit sessions. [Daniel James] McNeile is as rigorous as ever and they had much to talk about on drives while their wives made friends. William found [Thomas Rawson] Birks's book 'On matter and ether' on MacNeile's bookshelf, which he thinks his father must have, and he describes Birks's idea of ether, including the nature of the gaseous envelope of a comet. William considers the pressure of ether as described by Birks, its interaction with matter, and Birks's writing about refraction which savours 'of the same kind of playing with words'. Nevertheless, it is sufficiently fascinating for William to finish the book. On the table in front of him is an alligator, a spider, and a scorpion and he intends to send the alligator to Margie. He asks what his father has been doing at the bottom of the pond. William does not know what will happen to them after January, and he has expressed the wish to remain in Dacca, if he is not called upon to do anything better than a mofussil judgeship. Johnny [John Herschel] has just sent him his eclipse report, with other pamphlets. He is delighted with the report and wants to know more about the use of the spectroscpe on Sun clouds in daylight. They have lost a long letter of his mother's on the 'Carnatic' [which sank in the Red Sea] and he asks to tell her that he liked the Bishop of Argyle's 'Apology' and gives comments on this. |