There was more work connected with the Secretaryship—but there is more trouble and responsibility and distraction in the Presidency.
I am amused with your account of your way of governing your headstrong boy. I find the way of governing headstrong men to be very similar, and I believe it is by practising the method that I get the measure of success with which people credit me.
But they are often very fractious, and it is a bother for a man who was meant for a student.
Poor Spottiswoode's death was a great blow to me. Never was a better man, and I hoped he would stop where he was for the next ten years…
Ever your loving father,
T.H. Huxley.
[He finally decided that the question of standing again in November must depend on whether this course was likely to cause division in the ranks of the Society. He earnestly desired to avoid anything like a contest for scientific honours (As he wrote a little later:—] "I have never competed in the way of honour in my life, and I cannot allow myself to be even thought of as in such a position now, where, with all respect to the honour and glory, they do not appear to me to be in any way equivalent to the burden. And I am not at all sure that I may not be able to serve the right cause outside the Chair rather than in it."); [he was almost morbidly anxious that the temporary choice of himself should not be interpreted as binding the electors in any way.
I give the following letters to show his sensitiveness on every question of honour and of public advantage:—]
Brechin Castle, Brechin, N.B., September 19, 1883.
My dear Foster,