We are all pretty flourishing, and if my wife does not get worn out with cooks falling ill and other domestic worries, I shall be content.
Now this really is the end.
Ever yours very truly,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., March 7, 1887.
My dear Skelton [This letter is one of the twelve from T.H.H. already published by Sir John Skelton in his "Table Talk of Shirley" page 295 sq.],
Wretch that I am, I see that I have never had the grace to thank you for "Maitland of Lethington" which reached me I do not choose to remember how long ago, and which I read straight off with lively satisfaction.
There is a paragraph in your preface, which I meant to have charged you with having plagiarised from an article of mine, which had not appeared when I got your book. In that Hermitage of yours, you are up to any Esotericobuddhistotelepathic dodge!
It is about the value of practical discipline to historians. Half of them know nothing of life, and still less of government and the ways of men.
I am quite useless, but have vitality enough to kick and scratch a little when prodded.