The Newcastle people wrote to me some time ago telling me that Sir W. Armstrong was going to be their President. [The actual words of the Secretary were “We have asked Sir W. Armstrong to be President,” and Huxley was mistaken in supposing this intimation to imply that, as generally happens in such cases, Sir William had previously intimated his willingness to accept the position if formally asked.] Armstrong is an old friend of mine, so I wrote to him to make inquiries.  He told me that he was not going to be President, and knew nothing about the people who were getting up the Society.  So I declined to have anything to do with it.

However, the case is altered now that you are in the swim.  You have no gods to swear by, unfortunately; but if you will affirm, in the name of X, that under no circumstances shall I be called upon to do anything, they may have my name among the V.-P.’s and much good may it do them.

All our good wishes to you and yours.  The great thing one has to wish for as time goes on is vigour as long as one lives, and death as soon as vigour flags.

It is a curious thing that I find my dislike to the thought of extinction increasing as I get older and nearer the goal.

It flashes across me at all sorts of times with a sort of horror that in 1900 I shall probably know no more of what is going on than I did in 1800.  I had sooner be in hell a good deal—­at any rate in one of the upper circles where the climate and company are not too trying.  I wonder if you are plagued in this way.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The following letters, to his family or to intimate friends, are in lighter vein.  The first is to Sir M. Foster; the concluding item of information in reply to several inquiries.  The Royal Society wished some borings made in Egypt to determine the depth of the stratum of Nile mud:—­]

The Egyptian exploration society is wholly archaeological—­at least from the cut of it I have no doubt it is so—­and they want all their money to find out the pawnbrokers’ shops which Israel kept in Pithom and Rameses—­and then went off with the pledges.

This is the real reason why Pharaoh and his host pursued them; and then Moses and Aaron bribed the post-boys to take out the linch pins.

That is the real story of the Exodus—­as detailed in a recently discovered papyrus which neither Brugsch nor Maspero have as yet got hold of.

[To his youngest daughter:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., April 12, 1883.

Dearest Pabelunza,

I was quite overcome to-day to find that you had vanished without a parting embrace to your “faded but fascinating” parent. [A fragment of feminine conversation overheard at the Dublin meeting of the British Association, 1878.  “Oh, there comes Professor Huxley:  faded, but still fascinating.”] I clean forgot you were going to leave this peaceful village for the whirl of Gloucester dissipation this morning—­and the traces of weeping on your visage, which should have reminded me of our imminent parting, were absent.