things animate and
inanimate that, when we do not want things, Fate brings them to us on
silver platters and begs us to accept. We win by indifference as much as
by desire.

"I have declined to ship on board the 'Cormorant' as head surgeon, and
have applied to the University of Toronto for a position as Professor of
Natural History."

And so America had Huxley flung at her head. Toronto considered, and the
Canadians sat on the case, and after considerable correspondence, the
vacant chair was given to Professor Baldini of the Whitby Ladies
College. It was a close call for Canada! Huxley had imagined that the
New World offered special advantages to a rising young person of
scientific bent, but now he secured a marriage-license and settled down
as lecturer at the School of Mines. A little later he began to teach at
the Royal College of Surgeons, with which institution he was to be
connected the rest of his life, and fill almost any chair that happened
to be vacant.

From the time he was twenty-seven Huxley never had to look for work. He
was known as a writer of worth, and as a lecturer his services were in
demand.

He became President of the Geological and Ethnological Society; was
appointed Royal Commissioner for the Advancement of Science; was a
member of the London School Board; Secretary of the Royal Society; Lord
Rector of the University of Aberdeen; President of the Royal Society;
and refused an offer to become Custodian of the British Museum, a life
position, and where he had once applied for a clerkship.

In letters to Darwin he occasionally signed his name with all titles
added, thus, "Thomas Henry Huxley, M.B., M.D., Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S. of
Her Majesty's Navy."

Huxley was a forceful and epigrammatic writer, and had a command of
English second to no scientist that England has ever produced. He was
the only one of his group who had a distinct literary style. As a
speaker he was quiet, deliberate, decisive, sure; and he carried enough
reserve caloric so that he made his presence felt in any assemblage
before he said a word. In oratory it is personality that gives ballast.

Of his forty or so published books, "Man's Place in Nature," "Elementary
Physiology" and "Classification of Animals" have been translated into
many languages, and now serve as textbooks in various schools and
colleges.

Huxley is the founder of the so-called Agnostic School, which has the
peculiarity of not being a school. The word "ag