I am in rather a shaky and voiceless condition, and unless I am more up to the mark to-morrow morning I shall have to forgo the dinner, and, what is worse, the chat with you afterwards.

[One consequence of the spring attack of influenza was that this year he went once more to the Maloja, staying there from July 21 to August 25.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, July 9, 1893.

My dear Hooker,

What has happened to the x meeting you proposed?  However, it does not matter much to me now, as Hames, who gave me a thorough overhauling in London, has packed me off to the Maloja again, and we start, if we can, on the 17th.

It is a great nuisance, but the dregs of influenza and the hot weather between them have brought the weakness of my heart to the front, and I am gravitating to the condition in which I was five or six years ago.  So I must try the remedy which was so effectual last time.

We are neither of us very fit, and shall have to be taken charge of by a courier.  Fancy coming to that!

Let me be a warning to you, my dear old man.  Don’t go giving lectures at Oxford and making speeches at Cambridge, and above all things don’t, oh don’t go getting influenza, the microbes of which would be seen under a strong enough microscope to have this form.

[Sketch of an active little black demon.]

T.H.  Huxley.

[Though not so strikingly as before, the high Alpine air was again a wonderful tonic to him.  His diary still contains a note of occasional long walks; and once more he was the centre of a circle of friends, whose cordial recollections of their pleasant intercourse afterwards found expression in a lasting memorial.  Beside one of his favourite walks, a narrow pathway skirting the blue lakelet of Sils, was placed a gray block of granite.  The face of this was roughly smoothed, and upon it was cut the following inscription:—­

In memory of the illustrious English Writer and Naturalist, Thomas
Henry Huxley, who spent many summers at the Kursaal, Maloja.

In a letter to Sir J. Hooker, of October 1, he describes the effects of his trip, and his own surprise at being asked to write a critical account of Owen’s work:—­]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, October 1, 1893.

My dear Hooker,

I am no better than a Gadarene swine for not writing to you from the Maloja, but I was too procrastinatingly lazy to expend even that amount of energy.  I found I could walk as well as ever, but unless I was walking I was everlastingly seedy, and the wife was unwell almost all the time.  I am inclined to think that it is coming home which is the most beneficial part of going abroad, for I am remarkably well now, and my wife is very much better.

I trust the impaled and injudicious Richard [Sir J. Hooker’s youngest son, who had managed to spike himself on a fence.] is none the worse.  It is wonderful what boys go through (also what goes through them).