t difficulty of reducing the
human body to ashes caused the murder to out, and brought about the
hanging of a scientist of note.

"Yes, I have thought of the difficulty of disposing of a dead body,"
said Huxley, solemnly; "and often when on the point of committing murder
this was the only thing that made me hesitate!"

"Oh, Pater, we are ashamed of you," said his three lovely daughters in
concert. Huxley's ability to joke and his appreciation of the ludicrous
marked him, in the mind of John Fiske, as the greatest thinker of his
time. The humorist knows values, and that is why he laughs. Sensibility
is, in fact, the basic element of wit.

* * * * *

Huxley's duties on the "Rattlesnake" were not in the line of science.
His rank was assistant surgeon; but as sure-enough surgeons were only
sent out on bigger craft, he was this ship's doctor.

With the captain's help the men were kept busy, but not too busy, and
the food and regulations were such that about all Huxley had to do was
to look upon his work and pronounce it good.

As a physician, Huxley practised throughout his life the science of
prevention.

"With a prophetic vision, quite unconscious, my parents named me after
that particular apostle I was to admire most," once said Huxley. He was
a doubter by instinct, and approached the world of Nature as if nothing
were known about it.

His work on the Medusa won him the recognition of the British Society,
and this secured him the coveted surgeon's commission. Two tragedies
confront man on his journey through life--one when he wants a thing and
can not get it; the other when he gets the thing and finds he does not
want it.

Having secured his surgeon's commission, Huxley felt a strong repulsion
toward devoting his life to the abnormal.

"I am a scientist by nature, and my business is to teach," he wrote to
his affianced wife. These were wise words which he had learned from her,
but which he repeated, seemingly quite innocent of their source. We
take our own wherever we find it.

Miss Heathorn admired a surgeon, but loved a scientist, and Huxley being
a man was making a heroic struggle to be what the young woman most
wished. Love supplies an ideal--and that is the very best thing love
does, with possibly an exception or two. So behold a ship's surgeon in
London, full-fledged, refusing offers of position, and even declining to
take a choice of ships, for such is the perversity of