From Thomas Archer Hirst¹

by Cayley, Boole and Salmon.² Such experiences are not at first agreeable but certainly salutary. But no matter, there is plenty of time and plenty of subjects yet to treat.

And now a word about my willingness to accept the Queenwood Situation³ if offered me It is a difficult question for me to answer, your advice would influence me most, for as usual it requires a decision that I feel to want to throw partly off my shoulders on to thine. It will interfere seriously with my plans I have at least 2 years unfinished work on the continent which I fear if left now unfinished would remain so. I do not think it would be advisable to break up my student life now, even if there were a prospect of resuming it, it will or rather can never again be so well timed and effectual as at present, to break into the present course of study I have set out for myself would be seriously to injure its success. On the other hand I can scarcely bring myself to refuse such an offer because on its side also are great and necessary advantages. Like a selfish rascal I feel as if I should most like to refuse it at present with the permission to accept it in two years or a year and a half. But that of course is out of all reason. In this letter therefore I will come to no decided conclusion upon the matter I will first hear what you have to say about it for you know full well my position and your advice placed in either scale will draw the balance.

I am anxious to hear something definite of your prospects.⁴ I have heard whispers from Du Bois⁵ which are almost too good to be true I wait to hear from you the real fact of the matter.

Thine affectionately | T. A Hirst

I have had a letter⁶ from R. Carter which has pleased me very much. It was like a breath of wind from the olden time. Three full pages of large letter paper closely written, such eloquent verbosity, beautifully rounded paragraphs with high sounding words but alas little kernel. But it was ever so with Carter, and I have got half to like this habit of his. Before to day I have amused myself often by pruning his letters and seeing into how much space, what they actually contain can without injury be compressed. How much corn and how much chaff. I will give you a sentence excusing his delay in answering my note (this excuse occupies the first page nearly) hear how beautiful it reads. “And I must admit that my temporary silence has in some measure arisen from the anxiety I have felt to acknowledge more definitely than I could do in the language of an ordinary letter some of the sentiments to which you give expression – yielding as I confess they did an unexpected gratification to my own feelings in the agreeable retrospect they clearly convey of the past association between us” That definite acknowledgement he mentions is a sublime delusion I wish to goodness he had sent me the ordinary letter for I strive in vain to get much definiteness from this I suppose, extraordinary one. But nevertheless, Carter is a decent fellow for whom I have a kind of liking. His religious remarks are also in keeping with the whole man he generally shoves them into parenthesis as here. “The knowledge of science and of nature constitutes (next to the blessed truths of revealed Religion) the noblest and most estimable achievement to which the human mind and energies can be directed”*

P.S. What have you been doing in Manchester⁷ again?

* How it would startle the little fellow to tell him his parenthesis (in his mouth) is a damned lie. It is as clear as day that the parenthesis is a more tacit admission a matter of ettiquette between R Carter and the blessed truths in question. He bows politely to Revealed Religion⁸ but that is all.

RI MS JT/1/H/492

RI MS JT/1/HTYP/235–236