i86 3 ASKS TO BE RELIEVED FROM LECTURING 279 



tained during the summer, and he looked forward with 

 dismay to the winter, when the necessity for lecturing 

 would once more meet him face to face. As his 

 lectures were not written out, but were delivered 

 merely from notes, which he changed and brought up to 

 date from year to year, he always felt that the success of 

 a lecture depended almost entirely on his condition at 

 the time when he had to speak. Even up to the end, 

 though the subject was quite familiar to him, and he 

 could have discoursed for hours about it to a group of 

 friends, the formal lecture to a miscellaneous audience, 

 and still more to a company of students, was a severe 

 mental strain to him. When it was over he would come 

 out of the lecture-room sometimes so weary that he 

 could only go home and rest. The prospect of the 

 winter session of the School of Mines was, therefore, 

 at this time so dark to him that he seriously pro- 

 posed to resign his lectureship, if that could be done 

 without pecuniary loss. He felt that if relieved from 

 all teaching duty, he could devote himself with more 

 undivided energy to his duties in the Survey, and 

 that the change would be better for the Survey as well 

 as for himself. * If the Treasury throw out my pro- 

 posal,' he wrote to me, 'then I am where I was; and 

 as I do not intend to die, I suppose I must put on half- 

 steam. I wish they could be, consistently with official 

 etiquette, a little more liberal in the matter, for it is 

 hard to begin to go back when one has served twenty- 

 two years and more, and is half a century old, especially 

 when one's Survey work has been well trebled/ After 

 some months of suspense, 'the everlasting No' of the 

 Treasury was duly received. * So there it is,' he wrote 

 again, ' and I suppose when February comes I shall 

 try [lecturing]. I feel, I am glad to say, even better 



