REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY. 723 



never fully taken in how lovable he was; I had never (luite done him 

 iustice. In other words, no matter how vivid the iniaov which I car- 

 ried about in my mind, it instantly seemed dim and poor in presence 

 of the reality. Su(;h feelings are known to lovers; in other relations 

 of life they are surely unusual. I was speaking about this to my dear 

 old friend, the late Alexander :Macmillan, when he suddenly exclaimed: 

 "You may well feel so, my boy. I tell you, there is so much real 

 Christianity in Huxley that if it were parceled out among all the men, 

 women, and children in the British Islands there would be enough to 

 save the soul of every one of them, and plenty to spare!'' 



I have said that Huxley was never unkind; it is perhaps hardly 

 necessary to tell his readers that he could be sharp and severe, if the 

 occasion required. I have heard his wife say that he never would 

 allow himself to be preyed upon by bores, and knew wt^ll how to 

 get rid of them. Some years after the time of which 1 ha\'e been 

 writing I dined one evening at the Savile Club with Huxley, Si)encer, 

 and James Sime. As we were chatting over our coffee, some person 

 unknown to us came in and sat down on a sofa near b3\ Presently this 

 man, becoming interested in the conversation, cut short one of our 

 party and addressed a silly remark to Spencer iji reply to something 

 which he had been saying. Spencer's answer was civil, but brief, and 

 not inviting. Nothing abashed, the stranger kept on and persisted in 

 forcing himself into the conversation, despite our bleak frown.s and 

 arctic glances. It was plain that something must be done, and while 

 the intruder was aiming a question directly at Huxley the latter turned 

 his back upon him. This was intelligible even to assinine apprehen- 

 sion, and the remainder of our evening was unmolested. 



I never knew (not being inquisitive) just when the Huxleys began 

 having their '^tall teas" on Sunday evenings; but during that Hrst 

 winter I seldom met uny visitors at their house, except once or twice 

 Kay Lankester and Michael Foster. Afterwards Huxley, with his wife, 

 on their visit to America, spent a few sunnner days with my family at 

 Petersham, where the great naturalist learned for the first tune what 

 a tin dipper is. Once, in London, in speaking al)out the starry heavens, 

 I had said that I never could make head or tail of any constellation 

 except the Dipper, and of course everybody nuist .-ecognize in that 

 the resemblance to a dipper. To my surprise one of the young hdivs 

 asked " What is a dipper? " My effort at explanation went far enough 

 to evoke the idea of "a ladle," but with that approximation I was tain 

 to let the matter rest until that August day in New hngland, when, 

 after a tramp in the woods, my friends quailed cool mountain water 

 from a dipper, and I was told that not only the name, but the thing, is 



a Yankee notion. . . , . „ 



Some time after this I made several visits to Enghind, giving e.tui . . 

 at the Koyal Institution and elsewhere, and saw the Huxleys often, and 



