194 LIFE AND FKIENDSHIP AT KEW 



apropos of one of them, ' I could not sleep the night before 

 for thinking what I should say, nor the night after for 

 thinking of all the good things I might have said.' Though 

 he encouraged us to express our views, again on subjects, 

 not people, Cousin Joseph would often tease us, ending an 

 argument with his favourite expression, ' What you say 

 true, my dear, is perfectly correct.' He would parry 

 our questions with grave humour. For instance, on one 

 occasion when I asked what the doctor, whom he had been 

 consulting, had said about his health, he replied, ' I had to 

 be very firm with him, very firm indeed, or he would have 

 stopped all the things I liked.' 



We young people often used to smile at the way every- 

 one spoke of our distinguished scientist and to him as ' dear 

 Joseph.' I have never known a man more genuinely be- 

 loved, and deservedly so ; so childlike and ingenuous he was 

 and so really modest, always putting others before himself, 

 always unconscious of his own importance. One of his 

 most delightful traits was his tender-hearted affection for his 

 friends ; and I shall never forget how overcome he was with 

 grief when any of his old friends died, and how anxious he 

 was to do everything to help those they left behind to 

 mourn them. 



Many of his friends were distinguished scientists, like 

 himself, Herbert Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley among the 

 number. I remember Herbert Spencer coming to lunch one 

 day and my mother, who was a great student and admirer of 

 his books, asking him what he thought on a certain subject. 



' I forget what I think on that subject,' was his reply, 

 4 but you will find it in such and such a book of mine.' 



I remember Dr. Tyndall coming down at Christmas and 

 taking Cousin Joseph and all of us on to the lake in Kew 

 Gardens, where there was some skating. Dr. Tyndall began 

 making experiments in sound when, as if in the special 

 interest of these experiments, a thick London fog came 

 on, and, if I remember rightly, he was able to prove to 

 us that sound travelled more quickly in a fog than in 

 clear air. 



Cousin Joseph was interested in all the sciences, not only 

 in those he had made his special study. He would often 

 regret that he did not know much about astronomy. H 



