HIS FATHER 13 



""N 



of carriage, he has always remained with me as the type of what 

 the shape of man should be. Though I have seen many the 

 world about, I have never seen a better. When I came as a 

 youth to Harvard, I found that the memory of his form abided 

 not only with his classmates but with many of the common 

 people, as well as his propensity for fighting. The only trace 

 of a physical defect was near-sightedness, which was not con- 

 siderable enough to require the use of glasses ; he did not indeed 

 use them to the end of his life. Otherwise his body seemed per- 

 fect. He had been well trained in fencing and boxing, and he 

 was a good horseman and an expert swimmer. Of his fighting 

 habit, for which he had an unhappy reputation in his youth, I 

 recall but one instance, when a huge negro sprang at him knife 

 in hand ; he struck the man one blow which threw him into a 

 heap. Lad though I was, I still remember the change in the 

 situation when my father in a moment was upon the fellow to 

 see the measure of his hurts. 



As regards the qualities of his spirit, my father was absolutely, 

 almost brutally honest and straightforward, morally clean with 

 no trace of vice or even bad habits except that he smoked 

 tobacco in moderation. His intelligence was acute, though in- 

 tellectual matters aside from natural science did not interest 

 him. Indeed nothing interested him greatly; he seemed quite 

 destitute of constructive imagination, and though in some meas- 

 ure enjoying poetry, never cared to read it except to seek a 

 quotation. His talk related generally to superficial matters; 

 when the conversation led to the deeps he would after mayhap 

 a word or two, which often showed a singularly penetrating 

 intelligence, leap back, as if affrighted, to the commonplace. 

 In his medical practice he was successful in difficult cases, those 

 which aroused his combativeness, and often very clever in ruses 

 to gain his ends. Thus I have known him to help a stout man 

 on the verge of a collapse in Asiatic cholera, by reviling him as a 

 coward until the fellow's rage helped the reaction. Again, when 

 a woman who was sinking needed in like manner to be aroused, 



