The struggle to find something
connected with science which would pay was long and bitter; and only a
resolute determination to win kept Huxley from abandoning it altogether.
Uniform ill-luck met him everywhere. He has told in his autobiography
of his troubles with the Admiralty in the endeavor to get his papers
published, and of his failure there. He applied for a position to teach
science in Toronto; being unsuccessful in this attempt, he applied
successively for various professorships in the United Kingdom, and in
this he was likewise unsuccessful. Some of his friends urged him to hold
out, but others thought the fight an unequal one, and advised him to
emigrate to Australia. He himself was tempted to practice medicine in
Sydney; but to give up his purpose seemed to him like cowardice. On the
other hand, to prolong the struggle indefinitely when he might quickly
earn a living in other ways seemed like selfishness and an injustice to
the woman to whom he had been for a long time engaged. Miss Heathorn,
however, upheld him in his determination to pursue science; and his
sister also, he writes, cheered him by her advice and encouragement to
persist in the struggle. Something of the man's heroic temper may be
gathered from a letter which he wrote to Miss Heathorn when his affairs
were darkest.
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