These are all the points that strike me, and I do not keep your proof any longer (I send it by the same post as this note), because I fear you may be inconvenienced by the delay.

Tyndall is unfortunately gone to Switzerland, so that I cannot get you his comments.  Whether he might have picked holes in any detail or not I do not know, but I know his opinions sufficiently well to make sure in his agreement with the general argument.  In fact a favourite problem of his is—­Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom.  He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.

I am grieved to hear such a poor account of your health; I believe you will have to come at last to the heroic remedy of matrimony, and if “gynopathy” were a mode of treatment that could be left off if it did not suit the constitution, I should decidedly recommend it.

But it’s worse than opium-eating—­once begun and you must go on, and so, though I ascribe my own good condition mainly to the care my wife takes of me, I dare not recommend it to you, lest perchance you should get hold of the wrong medicine.

Beyond spending a night awake now and then I am in very good order, and I am going to spend my vacation in a spasmodic effort to lick the “Manual” into shape and work off some other arrears.

My wife is very fairly well, and, I trust, finally freed from all the symptoms which alarmed me so much.  I dread the coming round of September for her again, but it must be faced.

The babbies are flourishing; and beyond the facts that we have a lunatic neighbour on one side and an empty house on the other, that it has cost me about twice as much to get into my house as I expected, that the cistern began to leak and spoil a ceiling, and such other small drawbacks, the new house is a decided success.

I forget whether I gave you the address, which is—­

26 Abbey Place, St. John’s Wood.

You had better direct to me there, as after the 10th of this month I shall not be here for six weeks.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[October shows an unusual entry in his diary; the sacrifice of a working evening to hear Jenny Lind sing.  Fond though he was of music, as those may remember who ever watched his face at the Sunday evening gatherings in Marlborough Place in the later seventies, when there was sure to be at least a little good music or singing either from his daughters or some of the guests, he seldom could spare the time for concert-going or theatre-going, and the occasional notes of his bachelor days, “to the opera with Spencer,” had ceased as his necessary occupations grew more engrossing.

This year his friend Hooker moved to Kew to act as second in command to his father, Sir William Hooker, the director of the Botanical Gardens.  This move made meetings between the two friends, except at clubs and societies, more difficult, and was one of the immediate causes of the foundation of the x Club.  It is this move which is referred to in the following letters; the “poor client” being the wife of an old messmate of his on the “Rattlesnake":—­]