To Juliet Pollock   Wednesday morning¹

Wednesday morning

My dear Mrs Pollock,

I am just on the point of starting and the sight of your present² as I locked it up brought you to my mind and brought with it at the same time the memory of the awkward manner in which I accepted it from you. Now should I fall into a crevasse, or be thrown into one by Forbes (the mechanical and physiological result being all the same) I do not, trifling as the matter is want you to associate the thought of clownishness with my reception of your gift. I see my own defects as clearly as any body. Do not therefore attribute these defects to any intrinsic boorishness of my character, but merely to the want of that tact which habit alone gives, and which prevents me often from realising in the external world what the spirit sees to be fit and proper. My journal entry for the 21st of June contains the following—‘My awkwardness last night in accepting a gift from Mrs Pollock acts like a jarred string upon my memory. But even this jar is an admonition to me. If when men make mistakes no jar, no inner rebuke were felt, one great incentive to improvement would be cast away. Let me therefore resolve this little unhappiness into the determination to do more fitly in future.’

Thus you see I have got a little philosophical honey out of the circumstance. And now I will again write ‘good bye’ to you, and sincerely hope that when I return I shall see vigorous in body and spirit and all around you as happy as you can wish them to be

Most sincerely yours | John Tyndall.

RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/1905

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