Yule had been President of the Hakluyt Society from 1877, and in 1885 was elected President also of the Royal Asiatic Society.  He would probably also have been President of the Royal Geographical Society, but for an untoward incident.  Mention has already been made of his constant determination to judge all questions by the simple touchstone of what he believed to be right, irrespective of personal considerations.  It was in pursuance of these principles that, at the cost of great pain to himself and some misrepresentation, he in 1878 sundered his long connection with the Royal Geographical Society, by resigning his seat on their Council, solely in consequence of their adoption of what he considered a wrong policy.  This severance occurred just when it was intended to propose him as President.  Some years later, at the personal request of the late Lord Aberdare, a President in all respects worthy of the best traditions of that great Society, Yule consented to rejoin the Council, which he re-entered as a Vice-President.

In 1883, the University of Edinburgh celebrated its Tercentenary, when Yule was selected as one of the recipients of the honorary degree of LL.D.  His letters from Edinburgh, on this occasion, give a very pleasant and amusing account of the festivity and of the celebrities he met.  Nor did he omit to chronicle the envious glances cast, as he alleged, by some British men of science on the splendours of foreign Academic attire, on the yellow robes of the Sorbonne, and the Palms of the Institute of France!  Pasteur was, he wrote, the one most enthusiastically acclaimed of all who received degrees.

I think it was about the same time that M. Renan was in England, and called upon Sir Henry Maine, Yule, and others at the India Office.  On meeting just after, the colleagues compared notes as to their distinguished but unwieldy visitor.  “It seems that le style n’est pas l’homme meme in this instance,” quoth “Ancient Law” to “Marco Polo.”  And here it may be remarked that Yule so completely identified himself with his favourite traveller that he frequently signed contributions to the public press as MARCUS PAULUS VENETUS or M.P.V.  His more intimate friends also gave him the same sobriquet, and once, when calling on his old friend, Dr. John Brown (the beloved chronicler of Rab and his Friends), he was introduced by Dr. John to some lion-hunting American visitors as “our Marco Polo.”  The visitors evidently took the statement in a literal sense, and scrutinised Yule closely.[70]

In 1886 Yule published his delightful Anglo-Indian Glossary, with the whimsical but felicitous sub-title of Hobson-Jobson (the name given by the rank and file of the British Army in India to the religious festival in celebration of Hassan and Husain).

This Glossary was an abiding interest to both Yule and the present writer.  Contributions of illustrative quotations came from most diverse and unexpected sources, and the arrival of each new word or happy quotation was quite an event, and gave such pleasure to the recipients as can only be fully understood by those who have shared in such pursuits.  The volume was dedicated in affecting terms to his elder brother, Sir George Yule, who, unhappily, did not survive to see it completed.