Royal Observatory

Edinburgh

2^nd August 1901

P.S I hope to send the letter of Dec 1900 as soon as I am able to hunt for it. R.C

My dear Fred Holloway,

I was indeed glad to see your handwriting once more, and to gather from what you said that you are still at work.

I wrote a long letter to you at the end of last year; but it was returned with the superscription “Gone – no address.”

Last week it occurred to me to ask a business friend to copy out all the likely addresses from the Birmingham Directory.

To several of these I sent postcards – one of which happily reached its destination.

My wife, I am sorry to say, has been ill since the spring of 1900.

She was so ill, that for 13 weeks, she could not put her feet out of bed.

Fortunately I was very well &, in spite of much broken rest, managed to lecture in town on 80 days in the winter with a total outlay of 1/6 for cabs. This spring however the strain began to tell and about Jun 10 I began to feel ?? Still I pulled through the 450^th anniversary of the Glasgow University where I appeared as a delegate. Eventually I got home (& to bed) on the 15^th June. There I was very ill with influenza and sequilae, so ill that on one day even I thought the end must come. Thanks however to the most able help, most generously offered, I pulled through although for ten days I had taken no solid food except Bicarbonate of Soda…