434 



LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxvii 



hope of some good coming out of that Ashantee row, if only 

 in the shape of rare vocables. 



My attention is quite turned away from Anthropological 

 matters at present, but I will bear your question in mind if 

 opportunity offers. 



A letter to Professor Rolleston at Oxford gives a lively 

 account of his own ailments, which could only have been 

 written by one now recovering from them, while the illness 

 of another friend raised a delicate point of honour, which he 

 laid before the judgment of Mr. Darwin, more especially as 

 the latter had been primarily concerned in the case. 



4 Marlborough Place, Oct. i6, 1873. 



My dear Rolleston — A note which came from Mrs. Rolles- 

 ton to my wife the other day, kindly answering some inquiries 

 of ours about the Oxford Middle Class Examination, gave us 

 but a poor account of your health. 



This kind of thing won't do, you know. Here is ill, 



and I doing all I can to persuade him to go away and take care 

 of himself, and now comes ill news of you. 



Is it dyspeps again? If so follow in my steps. I mean to go 

 about the country, with somebody who can lecture, as the 

 " horrid example " — cured. Nothing but gross and disgusting 

 intemperance, Sir, was the cause of all my evil. And now that 

 I have been a teetotaller for nine months, and have cut down 

 my food supply to about half of what I used to eat, the enemy 

 is beaten. 



I have carried my own permissive bill, and no canteen (ex- 

 cept for my friends who still sit in darkness) is allowed on the 

 premises. And as this is the third letter I have written before 

 breakfast (a thing I never could achieve in the days when I 

 wallowed in the stye of Epicurus), you perceive that I am as 

 vigorous as ever I was in my life. 



Let me have news of you, and believe me — Ever yours very 

 faithfully, T. H. H. 



Athen^um Club, Nov. 3, 1873. 

 My dear Darwin — You will have heard (in fact I think I 

 mentioned the matter when I paid you my pleasant visit the 



other day) that is ill and obliged to go away for six months 



to a warm climate. It is a great grief to me, as he is a man 

 for whom I have great esteem and affection, apart from his 



