234 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAI>. IX 



It was a great pleasure to us all to have you with us 

 on New Year's Day. My wife claims it as her day, and I 

 am not supposed to know anything about the guests except 

 Spencer and TyndalL None but the very elect are in- 

 vited to the sacred feast so you see where you stand 

 among the predestined who cannot fall away from the 

 state of grace. 



I have not seen Spencer in such good form and good 

 humour combined for an age. 



I am working away at Harvey, and will send the MS. 

 to Virtue's as soon as I am sufficiently forward. Ever 

 yours very faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



4 MARLBOROTJGH PLACE, 

 Dec. 9, 1877. 



MY DEAR TYNDALL I am so sorry to have been out 

 when Mrs. Tyndall called to-day. By what we heard at 

 the x on Thursday, I imagined you were practically all 

 right again, or I should have been able to look after you 

 to-day. 



But what I bother you with this note for is to beg you 

 not to lecture at the London Institution to-morrow, but 

 to let me change days with you, and so give yourself a 

 week to recover. And if you are seedy, then I am quite 

 ready to give them another lecture on the Hokypotamus 

 or whatever else may turn up. 



But don't go and exert yourself in your present 

 condition. These severe colds have often nothing 

 very tangible about them, but are not to be trifled with 

 when folks are past fifty. 



Let me have an answer to say that I may send a tele- 

 gram to Nicholson first thing to-morrow morning to say 

 that I will lecture vice you. My "bottled life," as Hutton 

 calls it in the Spectator l this week, is quite ready to go 

 off. 



1 The Spectator for Dec. 8, 1877, began an article thus : 

 " Professor Huxley delivered a very amusing address last Saturday 



