But I and those who right willingly helped me did nothing more than our plain duty in such a case; and though I fully appreciate the motives which actuate Mrs. — and yourself and friends, and would gladly accept any trifle as a memento of my poor friend (I call him so, for we really struck up a great friendship in our twelve hours' acquaintance), I could not with any comfort use the very handsome cheque you offer.
Let me propose a compromise. As you will see by the enclosed paper, a colleague of mine has just died leaving widow and children in very poor circumstances. Contribute something to the fund which is being raised for their benefit, and I shall consider it as the most agreeable present you could possibly make to me.
And if you wish me to have a personal memento of our friend, send me a pipe that belonged to him. I am greatly devoted to tobacco, and will put it in a place of honour in my battery of pipes.
[The bracing effects of Arolla enabled him to stay two months in town before again retiring to Ilkley to be] "screwed up." [He had on the stocks his Gentian Paper and the chapter for the Darwin Life, besides the chapter on the Progress of Science for the "Reign of Queen Victoria," all of which he finished off this autumn; he was busy with Technical Education, and the Egyptian borings which were being carried out under the superintendence of the Royal Society. Finally he was induced by a "diabolical plot" on the part of Mr. Spencer to read, and in consequence to answer, an article in the "Fortnightly" for November by Mr. Lilly on "Materialism and Morality." These are the chief points with which the following correspondence is concerned.]
4 Marlborough Place, September 16, 1886.
My dear Foster,
I enclose the Report [The Annual Report of the Examiners in Physiology under the Science and Art Department, which, being still an Examiner he had to sign.] and have nothing to suggest except a quibble at page 4. If you take a stick in your hand you may feel lots of things and determine their form, etc., with the other end of it, but surely the stick is properly said to be insensible. Ditto with the teeth. I feel very well with mine (which are paid for) but they are surely not sensible? Old Tomes once published the opinion that the contents of the dentine tubules were sensory nerves, on the ground of our feeling so distinctly through our teeth. He forgot the blind man's stick. Indeed the reference of sensation to the end of a stick is one of the most interesting of psychological facts.
It is extraordinary how those dogs of examinees return to their vomit. Almost all the obstinate fictions you mention are of a quarter of a century date. Only then they were dominant and epidemic—now they are sporadic.
I wish Pasteur or somebody would find some microbe with which the rising generation could be protected against them.
We shall have to rearrange the Examination business—this partner having made his fortune and retiring from firm. Think over what is to be done.