As one who has tried to serve children, I look back upon having fallen in with Mr. Huxley as one of the many fortunate circumstances of my life.  It taught me the importance of making acquaintance with facts, and of studying the laws of them.  Under his influence it was that I most of all came to see the practical value of a single eye to those in any pursuit of life.  I saw what effect they had on emotions of charity and sentiments of justice, and what simplicity and grandeur they gave to appeals.

My last conversation with him was at Eastbourne some time in 1887 or 1888.  I was there on my society’s business.] “Well, Waugh, you’re still busy about your babies,” [was his greeting.  “Yes,” I responded “and you are still busy about your pigs.”  One of the last discussions at which he was present at the School Board for London had been on the proximity of a piggery to a site for a school, and his attack on Mr. Gladstone on the Gadarene swine had just been made in the “Nineteenth Century.”] “Do you still believe in Gladstone?” [he continued.] “That man has the greatest intellect in Europe.  He was born to be a leader of men, and he has debased himself to be a follower of the masses.  If working men were to-day to vote by a majority that two and two made five, to-morrow Gladstone would believe it, and find them reasons for it which they had never dreamed of.” [He said it slowly and with sorrow.

Two more incidents are connected with his service on the School Board.  A wealthy friend wrote to him in the most honourable and delicate terms, begging him, on public grounds, to accept 400 pounds sterling a year to enable him to continue his work on the Board.  He refused the offer as simply and straightforwardly as it was made; his means, though not large, were sufficient for his present needs.

Further, a good many people seemed to think that he meant to use the School Board as a stalking horse for a political career.  To one of those who urged him to stand for Parliament, he replied thus:—­]

November 18, 1871.

Dear Sir,

It has often been suggested to me that I should seek for a seat in the House of Commons; indeed I have reason to think that many persons suppose that I entered the London School Board simply as a road to Parliament.

But I assure you that this supposition is entirely without foundation, and that I have never seriously entertained any notion of the kind.

The work of the School Board involves me in no small sacrifices of various kinds, but I went into it with my eyes open, and with the clear conviction that it was worth while to make those sacrifices for the sake of helping the Education Act into practical operation.  A year’s experience has not altered that conviction; but now that the most difficult, if not the most important, part of our work is done, I begin to look forward with some anxiety to the time when I shall be relieved of duties which so seriously interfere with what I regard as my proper occupation.