1.  That I am here.

2.  That I have (a) had all my teeth out; (b) partially sprained my right thumb; (c) am very hot; (d) can’t smoke with comfort; whence I may leave even official intelligence to construct an answer to your second inquiry.

3.  Your third question is already answered under 2a.  Not writing might be accounted for by 2b, but unfortunately the sprain is not bad enough—­and “laziness, sheer laziness” is the proper answer.

I am prepared to take a solemn affidavit that I told you and Macgregor where I was coming many times, and moreover that I distinctly formed the intention of leaving my address in writing—­according to those official instructions which I always fulfil.

If the intention was not carried out, its blood be upon its own head—­I wash my hands of it, as Pilate did.

4.  As to the question whether I want my letters I can sincerely declare that I don’t—­would in fact much rather not see them.  But I suppose for all that they had better be sent.

5.  I hope Macgregor’s question is not a hard one—­spoon-meat does not carry you beyond words of one syllable.

On Friday I signalised my last dinner for the next three weeks by going to meet the G.O.M.  I sat next him, and he was as lively as a bird.

Very sorry to hear about your house.  You will have to set up a van with a brass knocker and anchor on our common.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[By the beginning of September he had made up his mind that he ought before long to retire from active life.  The first person to be told of his resolution was the head of the Science and Art Department, with whom he had worked so long at South Kensington.]

Highcroft House, Milford, Godalming, September 3, 1884.

My dear Donnelly,

I was very glad to have news of you yesterday.  I gather you are thriving, notwithstanding the appalling title of your place of refuge.  I should have preferred “blow the cold” to “Cold blow”—­but there is no accounting for tastes.

I have been going and going to write to you for a week past to tell you of a notion that has been maturing in my mind for some time, and that I ought to let you know of before anybody else.  I find myself distinctly aged—­tired out body and soul, and for the first time in my life fairly afraid of the work that lies before me in the next nine months.  Physically, I have nothing much to complain of except weariness—­and for purely mental work, I think I am good for something yet.  I am morally and mentally sick of society and societies—­committees, councils—­bother about details and general worry and waste of time.

I feel as if more than another year of it would be the death of me.  Next May I shall be sixty, and have been thirty-one mortal years in my present office in the School.  Surely I may sing my nunc dimittis with a good conscience.  I am strongly inclined to announce to the Royal Society in November that the chair will be vacant that day twelve month—­to resign my Government posts at mid-summer, and go away and spend the winter in Italy—­so that I may be out of reach of all the turmoil of London.