* * * *

He always thought that he was deficient in the gift of humour: "I am,"
he wrote to Mr. J.W. Marshall (May 6, 1905), "still grinding away at my
autobiography. Have got to my American lecture tour, and hope to finish
by about Sept. but have such lots of interruptions. I am just reading
Huxley's Life. Some of his letters are inimitable, but the whole is
rather monotonous. I find there is a good deal of variety in my life if
I had but the gift of humour! Alas! I could not make a joke to save my
life. But I find it very interesting." "Unless somebody," he wrote to
Miss Evans, "can make me laugh just before the critical moment I always
have a horrid expression in photographs." Yet another observant friend
remarked that "he had a keen sense of humour. It was always his boyish
joyous exuberance which touched me. He never grew old. When I had sat
with him an hour he was a young man, he became transfigured to me." ...
"The last time I saw Dr. Wallace," writes Prof. T.D.A. Cockerell of
Colorado, "was immediately after the Darwin Celebration at Cambridge in
1909. I was the first to give him the details concerning it, and vividly
remember how interested he was, and how heartily he laughed over some of
the funny incidents, which may not as yet be told in print. One of his
most prominent characteristics was his keen sense of humour, and his
enjoyment of a good story." In the summer of 1885 he spent a holiday
with Prof. Meldola at Lyme Regis. "After our ramble," said the
Professor, "we used to spend the evenings indoors, I reading aloud the
'Ingoldsby Legends,' which Wallace richly enjoyed. His humour was a
delightful characteristic. 'The inimitable puns of T. Hood were,' he
said, 'the delight of my youth, as is the more recondite and fantastic
humour of Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll in my old age.'"

* * * * *

Wallace loved to give time and trouble in aiding young men to start in
life, especially if they were endeavouring to become naturalists. He
sent them letters of advice, helped them in the choice of the right
country to visit, and gave them minute practical instructions how to
live healthily and to maintain themselves. He put their needs before
other and more fortunate scientific workers and besought assistance for
them.

"The central secret of his personal magnetism lay in his wide and
unselfish sympathy," writes Prof. Poulton.[66] "It might be thought by
those who