6 SELECTIONS FROM HUXLEY 



three hours in gratifying it. I did not cut myself, and none 

 of the ordinary symptoms of dissection-poison supervened, 

 but poisoned I was somehow, and I remember sinking into a 

 strange state of apathy. By way of a last chance, I was sent 

 5 to the care of some good, kind people, friends of my father's, 

 who lived in a farmhouse in the heart of Warwickshire. I 

 remember staggering from my bed to the window on the bright 

 spring morning after my arrival, and throwing open the case- 

 ment. Life seemed to come back on the wings of the breeze, 



10 and to this day the faint odor of wood-smoke, like that which 

 floated across the farmyard in the early morning, is as good 

 to me as the " sweet south upon a bed of violets. " I soon 

 recovered, but for years I suffered from occasional paroxysms 

 of internal pain, and from that time my constant friend, hypo- 



15 chondriacal dyspepsia, commenced his half century of co- 

 tenancy of my fleshly tabernacle. 



Looking back on my "Lehrjahre," I am sorry to say that I 

 do not think that any account of my doings as a student would 

 tend to edification. In fact, I should distinctly warn ingenu- 



20 ous youth to avoid imitating my example. I worked ex- 

 tremely hard when it pleased me, and when it did not 

 which was a very frequent case I was extremely idle (un- 

 less making caricatures of one's pastors and masters is to be 

 called a branch of industry), or else wasted my energies in 



25 wrong directions. I read everything I could lay hands upon, 

 including novels, and took up all sorts of pursuits to drop 

 them again quite as speedily. No doubt it was very largely 

 my own fault, but the only instruction from which I ever 

 obtained the proper effect of education was that which I 



30 received from Mr. Wharton Jones, who was the lecturer 

 on physiology at the Charing Cross School of Medicine. The 

 extent and precision of his knowledge impressed me greatly, 

 and the severe exactness of his method of lecturing was quite 

 to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt so much re- 



