My wife and I send our warmest good wishes to your future wife and yourself.  I cannot but think that those who are parted from us, if they have cognisance of what goes on in this world, must rejoice over everything that renders life better and brighter for the sojourners in it—­ especially of those who are dear to them.  At least, that would be my feeling.

Please commend us to Miss —­, and beg her not to put us on the “Index,” because we count ourselves among your oldest and warmest friends.

[To his daughter, Mrs. Roller:—­]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, May 5, 1892.

It was very pleasant to get your birthday letter and the photograph, which is charming.

The love you children show us, warms our old age better than the sun.

For myself the sting of remembering troops of follies and errors, is best alleviated by the thought that they may make me better able to help those who have to go through like experiences, and who are so dear to me that I would willingly pay an even heavier price, to be of use.  Depend upon it, that confounded “just man who needed no repentance” was a very poor sort of a father.  But perhaps his daughters were “just women” of the same type; and the family circle as warm as the interior of an ice-pail.

[A certain artist, who wanted to have Huxley sit to him, tried to manage the matter through his son-in-law, Hon. J. Collier, to whom the following is addressed:—­]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 27, 1892.

My dear Jack,

Inclosed is a letter for you.  Will you commit the indiscretion of sending it on to Mr. A.B. if you see no reason to the contrary?

I hope the subsequent proceedings will interest you no more.

I am sorry you have been so bothered by the critter—­but in point of pertinacity he has met his match. (I have no objection to your saying that your father-in-law is a brute, if you think that will soften his disappointment.)

Here the weather has been tropical.  The bananas in the new garden are nearly ripe, and the cocoanuts are coming on.  But of course you expect this, for if it is unbearably sunny in London what must it be here?

All our loves to all of you.

Ever yours affectionately, Pater.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, February 1, 1892.

My dear Hooker,

I hear you have influenza rampaging about the Camp [The name of Sir J. Hooker’s house at Sunningdale.] and I want to point out to you that if you want a regular bad bout of it, the best thing you can do is to go home next Thursday evening, at ten o’clock at night, and plunge into the thick of the microbes, tired and chilled.

If you don’t get it then, you will, at any rate, have the satisfaction of feeling that you have done your best!

I am going to the x, but then you see I fly straight after dinner to Collier’s per cab, and there is no particular microbe army in Eton Avenue lying in wait for me.