722 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY. 



SO violent as to result in a particularly elaborate and eoniical somer- 

 sault on the part of the frog, whereupon Huxley exclaimed, '"You see, 

 it doesn't require much of a brain to be an acrobat!'' In an examina- 

 tion on anatomy a very callow lad got the valves of the heart wrong, 

 putting the mitral on the right side; but Huxley took compassion on 

 him, with the remark, "' Poor little beggar! I never got them correctly 

 myself until J reflected that a bishop was never in the right!" On 

 another occasion, at the end of a lecture, he asked one of the students 

 if he understood it all. The student I'cplied, ''AH, sir, but one part, 

 during which you stood between me and the })lackboard." "Ah," 

 rejoincMl Huxley, "I did my best to make myself clear, but could not 

 make myself transparent!"' 



Probal)ly the most tedious bore on earth is the man who feels it 

 incumbent on him always to be facetious and to turn everything into 

 a joke. Lyncii law is al)out the right sort of thing for such persons. 

 Huxley had nothing in connnon with them. His drollery was the 

 >pontane()us bul)bling over of the seething fountains of energy. The 

 worhTs strongest .spirits, from Shakespeare down, have l»een noted for 

 playfulness, 'i'he ])i'iin and sober creatures who know neither hovv to 

 poke fun noi* to take it are apt to be the persons who are i-idden by 

 llieir work useful mortals after their fashion, mayhap, but not inter- 

 esting or stinuilating. Huxley's })layfulness lighttMied the buideii of 

 life for himself and for all with whom he came in contact, 1 seem to 

 see him now, looking up from his end of tlu' table — for my place was 

 usually at Mrs. Huxley's end — his dark eyes kindling und«'r their 

 shaggy brows, and a smile of indescribable beauty spreading over the 

 swarthy face, as prelude to some keen and pithj' but never unkind 

 remai'k. Electric in energy, f<)rmidal)le in his incisivenivss, he smote 

 hard; but there was nothing cruel about him, nor did he ever inflict 

 pain through heedless remarks. That would have been a stupidity of 

 which he was incapal)le. His quickness and sunmess of perception, 

 joined with his abounding kindliness, made him a man of almost infi- 

 nite tact. I had not known him long before I felt that the ruling 

 charactei'istic in his nature was tenderness. He reminded me of one 

 of Charles Reade's heroes, Colonel Dujardin, who had the eye of a 

 hawk, but down somewhere in the depths of that eye of a hawk there 

 was the eye of a dove. It was chiefly the S3'mpathetic quality in the 

 man that exerted upon me an ever-strengthening spell. My experi- 

 ences in visiting him had one notable feature, which 1 found it hard to 

 interpret. After leaving the house, at the close of a Sunday evening, 

 the outside world used to seem cold and lonely for being cut off from 

 that presence; 3'et on the next Sunday, at the moment of his cordial 

 greeting, a feeling always came over me that up to that moment 1 had 



' I liave here eked out my own reniini.sceiice!^ by instances cited from Leonard 

 Huxley's book. 



