Barring snow or any other catastrophe, I will be at "the Club" dinner on the 26th and help elect the P.R.S. I don't think I go more than once a year, and like you I find the smaller the pleasanter meetings.
I was very sorry to see Bowman's death. What a first-rate man of science he would have been if the Professorship at King's College had been 1000 pounds a year. But it was mere starvation when he held it.
I am glad to say that my wife is much better—thank yours for her very kind sympathy. I was very down the last time I wrote to you.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
Hodeslea, June 27, 1892.
My dear Foster,
My wife has been writing to Mrs. Foster to arrange for your visit, which will be heartily welcome.
Now I don't want to croak. No one knows better than I, the fatal necessity for any one in your position: more than that, the duty in many cases of plunging into public functions, and all the guttle, guzzle, and gammon therewith connected.
But do let me hold myself up as the horrid example of what comes of that sort of thing for men who have to work as you are doing and I have done. To be sure you are a "lungy" man and I am a "livery" man, so that your chances of escaping candle-snuff accumulations with melancholic prostration are much better. Nevertheless take care. The pitcher is a very valuable piece of crockery, and I don't want to live to see it cracked by going to the well once too often.