Leaving their family under the hospitable care of Sir W. and Lady Armstrong at Cragside, my father and mother started on July 27 on board the “Germanic,” reaching New York on August 5.  My father sometimes would refer, half-jestingly, to the trip as his second honeymoon, when, for the first time in twenty years, he and my mother set forth by themselves, free from all family cares.  And indeed, there was the underlying resemblance that this too came at the end of a period of struggle to attain, and marked the beginning of a more settled period.  His reception in America may be said to emphasise his definite establishment in the first rank of English thinkers.  It was a signal testimony to the wide extent of his influence, hardly suspected, indeed, by himself; an influence due above all to the fact that he did not allow his studies to stand apart from the moving problems of existence, but brought the new and regenerating ideas into contact with life at every point, and that his championship of the new doctrines had at the same time been a championship of freedom and sincerity in thought and word against shams and self-deceptions of every kind.  It was not so much the preacher of new doctrines who was welcomed, as the apostle of veracity—­not so much the student of science as the teacher of men.

Moreover, another sentiment coloured this holiday visit.  He was to see again the beloved sister of his boyhood.  She had always prophesied his success, and now after thirty years her prophesy was fulfilled by his coming, and, indeed, exceeded by the manner of it.

Mr. Smalley, then London correspondent of the “New York Tribune,” was a fellow passenger of his on board the “Germanic,” and tells an interesting anecdote of him:—­

Mr. Huxley stood on the deck of the “Germanic” as she steamed up the harbour of New York, and he enjoyed to the full that marvellous panorama.  At all times he was on intimate terms with Nature and also with the joint work of Nature and Man; Man’s place in Nature being to him interesting from more points of view than one.  As we drew near the city—­this was in 1876, you will remember—­he asked what were the tall tower and tall building with a cupola, then the two most conspicuous objects.  I told him the Tribune and the Western Union Telegraph buildings.  “Ah,” he said, “that is interesting; that is American.  In the old World the first things you see as you approach a great city are steeples; here you see, first, centres of intelligence.”  Next to those the tug-boats seemed to attract him as they tore fiercely up and down and across the bay.  He looked long at them and finally said,] “If I were not a man I think I should like to be a tug.” [They seemed to him the condensation and complete expression of the energy and force in which he delighted.