CHAPTER XXVII 



1873 



The year opens with a letter to Tyndall, then on a 

 lecturing tour in America : — 



4 Marlborough Place, Abbey Road, N.W,, 

 January i, 1872 [1873]. 



My dear Tyndall — I cannot let this day go by without 

 wishing you a happy New Year, and lamenting your absence 

 from our customary dinner. But Hirst and Spencer and 

 Michael Foster are coming, and they shall drink your health in 

 champagne while I do the like in cold water, making up by the 

 strength of my good wishes for the weakness of the beverage. 



You see I write from the new house. Getting into it was an 

 awful job, made worse than needful by the infamous weather we 

 have had for weeks and months, and by the stupid delays of the 

 workmen whom we had fairly to shove out at last as we came 

 in. We are settling down by degrees, and shall be very com- 

 fortable by and by, though I do not suppose that we shall be 

 able to use the drawing-room for two or three months to come. 

 I am very glad to have made the change, but there is a draw- 

 back to everything in " this here wale," as Mrs. Gamp says, 

 and my present thorn in the flesh is a neighbour, who says I 

 have injured him by certain operations in my garden, and is 

 trying to get something out of me by Chancery proceedings. 

 Fancy finding myself a defendant in Chancery ! 



It is particularly hard on me, as I have been especially care- 

 ful to have nothing done without Burton's sanction and assur- 

 ance that I was quite safe in law; and I would have given up 

 anything than have got into bother of this kind. But " sich 

 is life." 



You seem to have been making a Royal Progress in Yankee- 

 land. We have been uncommonly tickled with some of the 

 4t8 



