1888 LETTERS TO SIR M. FOSTER 79 



All our plans have been upset by the Fokn wind, 

 which gave us four days' continuous downpour here — 

 upset the roads, and flooded the Chiavenna-Colico Rail- 

 way. We hear that the latter is not yet repaired. 



I was going to write to you at the Vittoria, but 

 thought you could have hardly got there yet. We took 

 rooms there a week ago, and then had to countermand 

 them. If there are any letters kicking about for us, will 

 you ask them to send them on ? 



By way of an additional complication, my poor wife 

 gave herself an unlucky strain this morning, and even if 

 the railway is mended I do not think she will be fit to 

 travel for two or three days. We are very disappointed. 

 What is to be done ? 



I am wonderfully better. So long as I am taking 

 active exercise and the weather is dry, I am quite 

 comfortable, and only discover that I have a heart when 

 I am kept quiet by bad weather or get my liver out of 

 order. Here I can walk nine or ten miles up hill and 

 down dale without difficulty or fatigue. What I may be 

 able to do elsewhere is doubtful. — Ever yours, 



T. H. Huxley. 



It would do you and Mrs. Foster a great deal of good 

 to come up here. Not out of your way at all ! Oh 

 dear no ! 



Zurich, Od. 4, 1888. 



My deae Foster — I should have written to you at 

 Stresa, but I had mislaid your postcard, and it did not 

 turn up till too late. 



We made up our minds after all that we would as 

 soon not go down to the Lakes — where the ground would 

 be drying up after the inundations — so we went the 

 other way over the Julier to Ticfenkasten, and from T. 

 to Eagatz, where we stayed a week. Eagatz was hot and 

 steamy at first — cold and steamy afterwards — but earlier 

 in the season, I should think, it would be pleasant. 



