326 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sioDS. If these conclusions, arrived at and expressed in the following 

 chapters, do not meet the full concurrence of economists, the writer has 

 the satisfaction of knowing that they received, in the main, the full indorse- 

 ment of one so pre-eminently qualified to pass judgment upon them. 



A STUDENT'S RECOLLECTIONS OF HUXLEY. 



BY PKOF. ANGELO HE1LPKIN. 



IT was my pleasant fortune, a few years back, to haye my 

 name enrolled with a limited few in the registry book of the 

 Royal School of Mines in London, destined for work at one of the 

 ten or twelve tables which covered the greater part of the ground 

 space of Prof. Huxley's laboratory. The building was a compara- 

 tively new one, having been erected as an adjunct to the new 

 South Kensington Museum on Exhibition Road, and from the 

 top floor looked out the various rooms in which we were to re- 

 ceive our tutorage from the great naturalist. A climbing flight 

 of stone steps, with landings, wound round to this summit, to 

 which at times of irregular journey also conducted a box " lift." 

 On one of my daily upward saunterings I chanced to stumble 

 upon my master, who, always a rapid walker, overtook me on the 

 grand "round," and cordially greeted me as a fellow- traveler. 

 Possibly I allowed myself a little to be overtaken, for, though I 

 had already been in the workshop aod lecture theater a number 

 of days, and had answered questions on Torula, Paramcecium, and 

 other low grades of organisms, and had even swallowed a good- 

 natured rebuke for attempting to use a compound binocular in 

 place of the simple, and confessedly clumsy, microscopes which 

 were furnished gratuitously to the students, the opportunity to 

 meet the man as man and not as teacher had not yet presented 

 itself. Prof. Huxley's private rooms almost adjoined the labora- 

 tory, and frequently on passing the door the temptation grew 

 strong upon me to knock and allow myself the honor of an inter- 

 view, but each time a certain Tootsian timidity overcame me, and 

 directed my course either to the right or to the left. The meet- 

 ing on the landing was thus a deliverance, and Huxley allowed 

 me to make the most of it by himself opening the conversation. 

 It began with a reference to the deficiencies in modern building 

 construction, particularly applied to the South Kensington annex, 

 and evoked by the absence of proper mounting appliances. " Our 

 lifts are not like the grand elevators in your country," remarked 

 the professor a thought in which it was not difficult to concur. 



This first bit of extra-class conversation impressed itself forci- 

 bly upon my mind, both for the pleasure that it gave me and the 



