XXXII LIGHTENING HIS BURDENS 113 



to do so, because of the few attendances at the 

 dinners that his many engagements would permit 

 him. But ah'eady, as we have seen, he was 

 putting off his shoulders a few out of the great 

 number of these claims and burdens, and though 

 until the very end of his life he was more industri- 

 ously engaged than almost any other man we can 

 think of, he became increasingly more master of 

 his own time. He was again in this year pressed 

 to join the Club by his friend Sir J. Hooker, the 

 distinguished botanist, and accepted. He seems 

 to have enjoyed the dinners and the good talks 

 at them greatly. Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff 

 writes to him amusingly about it : 



11 Chelsea Embankment, 

 May 7, 1899. 



My dear Lubbock — Hooker tells me that, as the 

 preacher says, " you have come to a better mind " about 

 The Club. If you do not relapse into evil courses I will 

 mention the fact of your conversion after dinner on the 

 16th. I attended the meeting in the Egyptian Hall to 

 which you kindly invited me ; and was able to tell Dr. 

 Hill quite conscientiously that his address was " the 

 best Educational address I had ever heard." If I could 

 sing I should have been much inclined to sing the Nunc 

 dimittis, a proceeding which would have had the same 

 startling effect which was produced when Antoinette 

 Sterling did something of the sort at a Quakers' meeting, 

 . . . — Yours very sincerely, M. E. Grant Duff. 



The Chairman of the meeting of the Club at 

 which he was elected wrote him a friendly notifi- 

 cation of the fact, enclosing also the official in- 

 timation according to the formula devised by 

 Gibbon, which has been in use ever since : 



Sir— I have the pleasure to inform you that you had 

 last night the honour to be elected a member of The 

 VOL. II I 



