REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 215 
Probably the most tedious bore on earth is the man 
who feels it incumbent on him always to be facetious 
and to turn everything into a joke. Lynch law is 
about the right sort of thing for such persons. Hux- 
ley had nothing in common with them. His drollery 
was the spontaneous bubbling over of the seething 
fountains of energy. The world’s strongest spirits, 
from Shakespeare down, have been noted for playful- 
ness. The prim and sober creatures who know neither 
how to poke fun nor to take it are apt to be the per- 
sons who are ridden by their work, — useful mortals 
after their fashion, mayhap, but not interesting or stimu- 
lating. Huxley’s playfulness lightened the burden of 
life for himself and for all with whom he came in con- 
tact. I seem to see him now, looking up from his end 
of the table, —for my place was usually at Mrs. Hux- 
ley’s end, — his dark eyes kindling under their shaggy 
brows, and a smile of indescribable beauty spreading 
over the swarthy face, as prelude to some keen and 
pithy but never unkind remark. Electric in energy, 
formidable in his incisiveness, he smote hard; but there 
was nothing cruel about him, nor did he ever inflict 
pain through heedless remarks. That would have been 
a stupidity of which he was incapable. His quickness 
and sureness of perception, joined with his abounding 
kindliness, made him a man of almost infinite tact. 
I had not known him long before I felt that the ruling 
characteristic in his nature was ¢enderness. He re- 
minded me of one of Charles Reade’s heroes, Colonel 
Dujardin, who had the eye of a hawk, but down some- 
where in the depths of that eye of a hawk there was 
the eye of a dove. It was chiefly the sympathetic 
quality in the man that exerted upon me an ever 
