course in the Royal College of Science." I had enough of good sense 

 to follow this advice and then my troubles were over, for I had put my- 

 self into thoroughly competent hands and every step in my European 

 education was taken by Huxley's advice. 



This fortunate turn was very much more "by good luck than good 

 management," As I look back, I am fairly aghast at the foolishness of 

 my whole scheme and I am wholly at a loss to understand how such 

 experienced and sagacious men as my uncles, Dr. Guyot and Dr. 

 McCosh, all of them deeply interested in my welfare, could have sanc- 

 tioned so absurd a plan. I, a boy of twenty, who had never in his life 

 been away from home entirely on his own responsibility, was expected 

 to start out with no definite destination. Nor was any institution or 

 teacher agreed upon in advance; even the subject of my studies was left 

 entirely vague. Practically, I was told : "Go to England and study some- 

 thing with somebody, and then go on to Germany and study something 

 else with some other body," as Dr. McCosh would have said. That this 

 absurd undertaking should actually have worked out so well was due to 

 no one's wisdom or foresight, but to the happy chance of Leidy's hav- 

 ing given me a letter to Huxley and my having presented it promptly 

 after my arrival in London. 



Social Hfe also began for me in London; I had had almost no experi- 

 ence of the kind at home. Immediately after our arrival Davies intro- 

 duced me to a family of his friends, who were very hospitable and 

 entertained me on many occasions at dinner and receptions until I 

 went to Cambridge. The society that I met at this house, though in- 

 cluding several people of title, struck me as altogether phiHstine and 

 devoid of any intellectual life. On one occasion, I mentioned the name 

 of Professor Huxley and nobody seemed to know whom I meant; 

 finally, a woman exclaimed: "Oh! yes; that's the man who rides in 

 the Park, carrying an umbrella over his head." Here, too, there was a 

 worship of rank that went much against my stomach and, in Osborn's 

 words, when I took him to a reception there: "This is hke a page out 

 of Thackeray." 



I don't wish to seem guilty of the unpardonable sin of laughing at 

 people who were kind to me and whose hospitality I accepted. I am 

 merely reproducing the impression made upon me by a particular circle 

 in London. I saw many others, scientific, professional, business; all 

 of them middle class, for of fashionable society, I saw nothing at all. 

 Nor did I meet many of the literary and artistic folk, though I was 

 frequently greatly amused by the posturing of the aesthetic crowd, 



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