This is written in my best hand.  I am proud of it, as I can read every word quite easily myself, which is more than I can always say for my own Ms.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The same experience is attested and enforced in the correspondence with Dr. Anton Dohrn, which begins this year.  Genial, enthusiastic, as pungent as he was eager in conversation, the future founder of the Marine Biological Station at Naples, on his first visit to England, made my father’s acquaintance by accepting his invitation to stay with him] “for as long as you can make it convenient to stay” [at Swanage,] “a little country town with no sort of amusement except what is to be got by walking about a rather pretty country.  But having warned you of this, I repeat that it will give me much pleasure to see you if you think it worthwhile to come so far.”

[Dr. Dohrn came, and came into the midst of the family—­seven children, ranging from ten years to babyhood, with whom he made himself as popular by his farmyard repertory, as he did with the elders by other qualities.  The impression left upon him appears from a letter written soon after:—­

“Ich habe heute mehrere Capitel in Mill’s ‘Utilitarianism’ gelesen and das Wort happiness mehr als einmal gefunden:  hatte ich eine Definition dieses vielumworbenen Wortes irgend Jemand zu geben, ich wurde sagen (I have been reading several chapters of Mill’s ‘Utilitarianism’ to-day, and met with the word ‘happiness’ more than once; if I had to give anybody a definition of this much debated word, in other say):  go and see the Huxley family at Swanage; and if you would enjoy the same I enjoyed, you would feel what is happiness, and never more ask for a definition of this sentiment.”]

Swanage, September 22, 1867.

My dear Dohrn,

Thanks to my acquaintance with the “Microskopische Anatomie,” and to the fact that you employ our manuscript characters, and not the hieroglyphics of what I venture to call the “cursed” and not “cursiv” Schrift, your letter was as easy as it was pleasant to read.  We are all glad to have news of you, though it was really very unnecessary to thank us for trying to make your brief visit a pleasant one.  Your conscience must be more “pungent” than your talk, if it pricks you with so little cause.  My wife rejoices saucily to find that phrase of hers has stuck so strongly in your mind, but you must remember her fondness for “Tusch.”

You must certainly marry.  In my bachelor days, it was unsafe for anyone to approach me before mid-day, and for all intellectual purposes I was barren till the evening.  Breakfast at six would have upset me for the day.  You and the lobster noted the difference the other day.

Whether it is matrimony or whether it is middle age I don’t know, but as time goes on you can combine both.

I cannot but accept your kind offer to send me Fanny Lewald’s works, though it is a shame to rob you of them.  In return my wife insists on your studying a copy of Tennyson, which we shall send you as soon as we return to civilisation, which will be next Friday.  If you are in London after that date we shall hope to see you once more before you return to the bosom of the “Fatherland.”