But on the whole, the amount of exercise he took was insufficient for his bodily needs. Even the riding prescribed for him when he first broke down, became irksome, and was not continued very long, although his bodily machine was such as could only be kept in perfect working order by more exercise than he would give. His physique was not adapted to burn up the waste without special stimulus. I remember once, as he and I were walking up Beachy Head, we passed a man with a splendid big chest. "Ah," said my father regretfully, "if I had only had a chest like that, what a lot of work I could have done." When, in 1872, he built his new house in Marlborough Place, my father bargained for two points; one, that each member of the family should have a corner of his or her own, where, as he used to say, it would be possible to "consume their own smoke"; the other, that the common living-rooms should be of ample size. Thus from 1874 onwards he was enabled to see something of his many friends who would come as far as St. John's Wood on a Sunday evening. No formal invitation for a special day was needed. The guests came, before supper or after, sometimes more, sometimes fewer, as on any ordinary at-home day. There was a simple informal meal at 6.30 or 7 o'clock, which called itself by no more dignified name than high tea--was, in fact, a cold supper with varying possibilities in the direction of dinner or tea. It was a chance medley of old and young--friends of the parents and friends of the children, but all ultimately centring round the host himself, whose end of the table never flagged for conversation, grave or gay. Afterwards talk would go on in the drawing-room, or, on warm summer evenings, in the garden--nothing very extensive, but boasting a lawn with an old apple-tree at the further end, and in the borders such flowers and trees as endure London air. Later on, there was almost sure to be some music, to which my father himself was devoted. His daughters sang; a musical friend would be there; Mr. Herbert Spencer, a frequent visitor, was an authority on music. Once only do I recollect any other form of entertainment, and that was an occasion when Sir Henry Irving, then not long established at the Lyceum, was present and recited "Eugene Aram" with great effect. In his "London Letters" Mr. G.W. Smalley has recorded his impressions of these evenings (Another interesting account from the same pen is to be found in the article "Mr. Huxley," Scribner's Magazine, October 1895.), at which he was often present:--