His second daughter died of consumption a few months after her stepmother, while he was in South Africa alone.

Otherwise, his relations with his children were perfect and unbroken, for no father was more beloved and adored.

Indeed, all intelligent children delighted in his company, because they could not help understanding him, and yet he paid them the acceptable compliment of talking to them as if they were grown up.
There is nothing in the world more evanescent than good conversation.

Froude was one of the best and most agreeable talkers of his day.

He could talk to old and young, to men, women, and children, to Devonshire seamen or labourers, to the most highly cultivated society of Oxford or London, with equal ease and equal enjoyment.