180 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VII 



However, the class grew without such adventitious 

 aid, and he writes to Mr. Herbert Spencer on June 

 15: 



... I have a class of 353, and instruct them in dry 

 facts particularly warning them to keep free of the 

 infidel speculations which are current under the name 

 of evolution. 



I expect an "examiner's call" from a Presbytery 

 before the course is over, but I am afraid that the pay 

 is not enough to induce me to forsake my " larger sphere 

 of influence " in London. 



In the same letter he speaks of a flying visit to 

 town which he was about to make on the following 

 Thursday, returning on the Saturday for lack of a 

 good Sunday train : 



Mayhap I may chance to see you at the club but I 

 shall be torn to pieces with things to do during my two 

 days' stay. 



If Moses had not existed I should have had three 

 days in town, which is a curious concatenation of 

 circumstances. 



As for his health during this period, it maintained, 

 on the whole, a satisfactory level, thanks to the 

 regime of which he writes to Professor Baynes : 



I am very sorry to hear that you have been so 

 seriously ill You will have to take to my way of 

 living a mutton chop a day and no grog, but much 

 baccy. Don't begin to pick up your threads too fast. 



No wonder you are uneasy if you have crabs on your 

 conscience. 1 Thank Heaven they are not on mine ! 



1 I.e. an article for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 



