CHAPTER VI 



BUSINESS AND SCIENCE (1851-1854) 



(Age 17-20) 



For some years the life at High Elms went 

 on in its uneventful but exceedingly strenuous 

 course. Young Lubbock confesses, in his diaries, 

 that he was " lonely," but adds that this was 

 probably of ultimate benefit to him, because it 

 threw him so much on the companionship of 

 books. We may be tolerably sure that even in 

 the drives and train journeys to and fro the City 

 a book of some sort was not long out of his hand. 

 One of his sons told me that on the day that his 

 father first took him into the City, to introduce 

 him to the partners of their business house, 

 Lord Avebury drew a book out of his pocket as' 

 soon as they were seated in the " tube," and said, 

 " I think you will find it a good plan always 

 to have a book with you, in your pocket, to 

 read at odd times," and therewith he became at 

 once so absorbed in his reading as to be quite 

 unconscious of his fellow-travellers and their 

 conversation. 



He had a mode, as he read, of having in his 

 book a slip of paper, cut to a certain size, on 



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