render ourselves insensible or acquire the habit of doing things coolly.
It is assuredly of no great use to tear one's self to pieces before one
is fifty. But the alternative, for men constructed on the high pressure
tubular boiler principle, like ourselves, is to lie still and let the
devil have his own way. And I will be torn to pieces before I am forty
sooner than see that.

I have been privately trading on my misfortunes in order to get a little
peace and quietness for a few months. If I can help it I don't mean to
do any dining out this winter, and I have cut down Societies to the
minimum of the Geological, from which I cannot get away.

But it won't do to keep this up too long. By and by one must drift into
the stream again, and then there is nothing for it but to pull like mad
unless we want to be run down by every collier.

I am going to do one sensible thing, however, viz. to rush down to
Llanberis with Busk between Christmas Day and New Year's Day and get my
lungs full of hill-air for the coming session.

I was at Down on Saturday and saw Darwin. He seems fairly well, and his
daughter was up and looks better than I expected to see her.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Meanwhile, he took the opportunity to make the child's birth a new link
with his old friend, and wrote as follows :--]