90 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, v 



nothing to do with matrimony for the present. In truth, 

 though our marriage was my great wish on many accounts, 

 yet I feared to bring upon her the consequences that 

 might have occurred had anything happened to me within 

 the next few years. We had a sad parting enough, and 

 as is usually the case with me, time, instead of allevi- 

 ating, renders more disagreeable our separation. I have 

 a woman's element in me. I hate the incessant struggle 

 and toil to cut one another's throat among us men, and I 

 long to be able to meet with some one in whom I can 

 place implicit confidence, whose judgment I can respect, 

 and yet who will not laugh at my most foolish weaknesses, 

 and in whose love I can forget all care. All these con- 

 ditions I have fulfilled in Nettie. With a strong natural 

 intelligence, and knowledge enough to understand and 

 sympathise with my aims, with firmness of a man, when 

 necessary, she combines the gentleness of a very woman 

 and the honest simplicity of a child, and then she loves 

 me well, as well as I love her, and you know I love but 

 few in the real meaning of the word, perhaps, but two 

 she and you. And now she is away, and you are away. 

 The worst of it is I have no ambition, except as means to 

 an end, and that end is the possession of a sufficient 

 income to marry upon. I assure you I would not give 

 two straws for all the honours and titles in the world. 

 A worker I must always be it is my nature but if I 

 had 400 a year, I would never let my name appear to 

 anything I did or shall ever do. It would be glorious 

 to be a voice working in secret and free from all those 

 personal motives that have actuated the best. But, un- 

 fortunately, one is not a " vox et prseterea nihil," but with 

 a considerable corporality attached which requires feeding, 

 and so while my inner man is continually indulging in 

 these anchorite reflections, the outer is sedulously elbow- 

 ing and pushing as if he dreamed of nothing but gold 

 medals and professors' caps. 



I am getting on very well better I fear than I 



