202 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [MAY 7%, 
world, the finished gentleman, who gave life and animation to 
the party.” 
Dr. Stoke she calls ‘‘ profoundly scientific and eminently ab- 
sent,” and relates the following incident in which he was concerned. 
“* On one occasion, when the Lunar Meeting, or ‘ Lunatics,’ 
as our butler called them, were seated at dinner, a blazing fire 
being in the room, we were astonished by hearing a sudden 
hissing noise, and seeing a large and beautiful, yellow and black 
snake rushing about the room. My dear mother, who saw it 
was not venomous, said to me: ‘ Mary Anne, go and catch that 
snake,’ which, after some trouble, and thinking all the while 
of little Harry Sandford and Tommy Merton, I succeeded in ac- 
complishing. We were wondering where it could have come 
from, when Dr. Stoke said that, as he was riding along, he had 
seen the poor animal frozen on a bank, and put it in his pocket to 
dissect, but the snake had thawed and escaped from his pocket. 
The doctor praised me very much for my prowess, and as a reward 
he made me a present of my prisoner, which I long kept in a 
glass jar and carefully tended every day; at last, however, I 
gave him his freedom.” 
Of the eccentric Dr. Darwin the lady had less agreeable 
reminiscences. ‘The doctor had been called professionally to 
see her mother; he arrived in a worn-out, muddy ‘‘ sulky,” fitted 
up with receptacles for writing and eating, stocked with sweet 
confections, of which he was fond, and heaped up with books 
from the floor to the front window. ‘‘ We all hastened,” she 
says, ‘to the window to see Dr. Darwin, of whom we had heard 
so much, and whom I was prepared to honor and venerate, in no 
common degree, as the restorer of my mother’s health. What 
then was my astonishment at beholding him, as he slowly got 
out of the carriage! His figure was vast and massive, his head 
was almost buried on his shoulders, and he wore a scratch-wig, 
as it is called, tied up in a little bobtail behind.” Meanwhile, 
amidst all this, the doctor’s eye was deeply sagacious, his obser- 
vation most keen, and his intelligence well calculated to inspire 
confidence in his patients. When conversation began, his flow 
of wit and anecdote was most entertaining and astonishing, in 
spite of an inveterate stammering. 
Elsewhere she records the painful impression made on her by 
the doctor’s irreligion.’ 
1 We have ventured to quote, at great length, from Mrs. Schimmel 
Penninck’s graphic reminiscences, because they certainly bear the im- 
press of truth and are lifelike in their portraiture. She had every ad- 
vantage of forming the acquaintance of the members of the Society, her 
father being active in it from the time she was eight years old until she 
was five and twenty, and a tenacious memory, added to a power of 
