22 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, n 



Looking back (he says) on my " Lehrjahre," I am sorry to 

 say that I do not think that any account of my doings as a 

 student would tend to edification. In fact, I should distinctly 

 warn ingenuous youth to avoid imitating my example. I worked 

 extremely hard when it pleased me, and when it did not, which 

 was a very frequent case, I was extremely idle (unless making 

 caricatures of one's pastors and masters is to be called a branch 

 of industry), or else wasted my energies in wrong directions. I 

 read everything I could lay hands upon, including novels, and 

 took up all sorts of pursuits to drop them again quite as speedily. 

 No doubt it was very largely my own fault, but the only in- 

 struction from which I obtained the proper effect of education 

 was that which I received from Mr. Wharton Jones, who was 

 the lecturer on physiology at the Charing Cross School of Medi- 

 cine. The extent and precision of his knowledge impressed 

 me greatly, and the severe exactness of his method of lecturing 

 was quite to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt so 

 much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since. I 

 worked hard to obtain his approbation, and he was extremely 

 kind and helpful to the youngster who, I am afraid, took up 

 more of his time than he had any right to do. It was he who 

 suggested the publication of my first scientific paper — a very 

 little one — in the Medical Gazette of 1845, and most kindly cor- 

 rected the literary faults which abounded in it, short as it was ; 

 for at that time, and for many years afterwards, I detested the 

 trouble of writing, and would take no pains with it. 



He never forgot his debt to Wharton Jones, and years 

 afterwards was delighted at being able to do him a good 

 turn, by helping to obtain a pension for him. But although 

 in retrospect he condemns the fitfulness of his energies and 

 his want of system, which left much to be learned afterwards, 

 which might with advantage have been learned then, still it 

 was his energy that struck his contemporaries. I have a 

 story from one of them that when the other students used 

 to go out into the court of the hospital after lectures were 

 over, they would invariably catch sight of young Huxley's 

 dark head at a certain window bent over a microscope while 

 they amused themselves outside. The constant silhouette 

 framed in the outlines of the window tickled the fancy of 

 the young fellows, and a wag amongst them dubbed it with 

 a name that stuck, " The Sign of the Head and Microscope." 



