The Henson Journals

[85]

Thursday, May 16th, 1929.

A beautiful morning after the rain, bright & mild. There were thrushes on the lawn: & the swifts are here. I worked again with little effect.

After lunch I walked round the Park with Lionel. The rise in temperature following on the heavy rainfall is quickening growth so effectually that trees & plants seem to expand under one's eyes.

The newspapers report a terrible and unusual disaster from Cleveland, Ohio. An explosion in the X ray room of the great Hospital released deadly gases, & started extensive fires with the result that about 100 persons perished in the most horrifying circumstances conceivable. This dreadful event arouses alarm in all hospitals. There can be no doubt as to the grave and largely unsuspected dangers which attach to the amazing applications of science, whether curative as in the Hospitals, or productive, as in vast works like those at Stockton.

[86]

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"The last ten years of life, as Jowett frequently remarked, are the best: best, because you are freest from care, freest from illusion and fullest of experience. They may be freest of care if you are head of a college, & have no domestic ties; but unluckily the illusions which have vanished generally include the illusion that anything which you did at your best had any real value, or that anything which you can do hereafter will be even as good. One of the advantages of Jowett's identification of himself with his college was perhaps that he was never freed from this illusion. He won the advantage at a heavy price – the price of not knowing the greatest happiness."

Sir Leslie Stephen.

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