66 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY cHAP. Ill 



and no Delilah, cut it last ! But I waste Biblical 

 allusions upon you. 



My wife and Nettie, who is on a visit, join with me in 

 best wishes. 



Please let me have a line to say how you are — 

 Gladstonianly on a post-card. — Ever yours very faithfully, 



T. H. Huxley. 



BouKNEMOUTH, AjrHl 7, 1888. 



My dear Foster — " Let thy servant's face be white 

 before thee." The obituary of Dar\\dn went to Rix ^ 

 yesterday ! It is not for lack of painstaking if it is not 

 worth much, but I have been in a bad vein for work of 

 any kind, and I thought I should never get even this 

 simple matter ended. 



I have been bothered with praecordial uneasiness and 

 intermittent pulse ever since I have been here, and at last 

 I got tired of it and went home the day before yesterday 

 to get carefully overhauled. Hames tells me there is 

 weakness and some enlargement of the left ventricle, which 

 is pretty much what I expected. Luckily the valves are 

 all right. 



I am to go and devote myself to coaxing the left v. 

 wall to thicken pro rata — among the mountains, and to 

 have nothing to do with any public functions or other 

 exciting bedevilments. So the International Geological 

 Congress will not have the pleasure of seeing its Honorary 

 President in September. I am disgusted at having to 

 break an engagement, but I cannot deny that Hames is 

 right. At present the mere notion of the thing puts me 

 in a funk. 



I wish I could get out of the chair of the M.B.A. 

 also. ... I know that you and Evans and Dyer will do 

 your best, but you are all eaten up with other occupationa 



^ Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society. 



