LETTERS 



6 7 



getting up the Society. So I declined to have anything to do 

 with it. 



However, the case is altered now that you are in the swim. 

 You have no gods to swear by, unfortunately; but if you will 

 affirm, in the name of X, that under no circumstances shall I be 

 called upon to do anything, they may have my name among the 

 V.-P.'s and much good may it do them. 



All our good wishes to you and yours. The great thing one 

 has to wish for as time goes on is vigour as long as one lives, 

 and death as soon as vigour flags. 



It is a curious thing that I find my dislike to the thought of 

 extinction increasing as I get older and nearer the goal. 



It flashes across me at all sorts of times with a sort of horror 

 that in 1900 I shall probably know no more of what is going on 

 than I did in 1800. I had sooner be in hell a good deal — at any 

 rate in one of the upper circles, where the climate and com- 

 pany are not too trying. I wonder if you are plagued in this 

 way.— Ever yours, 



The following letters, to his family or to intimate friends, 

 are in lighter vein. The first is to Sir M. Foster ; the con- 

 cluding item of information in reply to several enquiries. 

 The Royal Society wished some borings made in Egypt to 

 determine the depth of the stratum of Nile mud : — 



The Egyptian exploration society is wholly archaeological — 

 at least from the cut of it I have no doubt it is so — and they 

 want all their money to find out the pawnbrokers' shops which 

 Israel kept in Pithom and Rameses — and then went off with the 

 pledges. 



This is the real reason why Pharaoh and his host pursued 

 them; and then Moses and Aaron bribed the post-boys to take 

 out the linch-pins. 



That is the real story of the Exodus — as detailed in a recent- 

 ly discovered papyrus which neither Brugsch nor Maspero have 

 as yet got hold of. 



To his Youngest Daughter 



4 Marlborough Place, N.W., April 12, 1883. 

 Dearest Pabelunza — I was quite overcome to-day to find 

 that you had vanished without a parting embrace to your " faded 



