20 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



age, with some little fortune to waste, settled in Virginia. In 

 the course of his service he was with Wolfe at the capture of 

 Quebec, and in the well-known picture of the hero's death, John 

 Hinde is figured as the surgeon who seeks to aid him. I recall 

 the account of an unsuccessful effort to recover a family por- 

 trait loaned to Benjamin West for use in his picture. John 

 Hinde first appears in the family traditions as a merry if not a 

 dissipated person, who gave more attention to riding after 

 foxes and other follies than to his business as planter and coun- 

 try doctor, or to his growing family. His wife, who was born a 

 Hubbard, seems also to have been rather a worldly person. But 

 in the great wave of the religious revival which led to Method- 

 ism, the wife " experienced religion." Her husband, it is related, 

 and I have seen an account of the incident in print, judged the 

 symptoms as indicating trouble in her brain, and applied a fly 

 blister to the back of her neck. When he came to dress the 

 blister he had a like experience, which from all accounts must 

 have been a striking visitation ; for the man was at once changed 

 in all his habits of thought and action. He became a deeply 

 religious person, giving up his life to charitable work, going up 

 and down the land as a physician and surgeon who took no pay. 

 It is said that he was wont to pray at every bedside for the 

 Lord's blessing on the help he sought to give. The accounts I 

 have had of the few persons who remembered John Hinde make 

 it clear that he was a singularly attractive person. His access 

 of piety having left him if anything merrier than before it came, 

 he went to the end of his life, at near one hundred years, in a 

 frolicsome relation with his Maker. When he came to die, his 

 last act was to feel the pulse of his wife, who was then a woman 

 of ninety, and to tell her that they would have to be apart for 

 some years. 



Of the children of John Hinde I saw but one, a daughter a 

 widow whom I remember as Aunt C , a most gracious pre- 

 sence. She was entirely blind, but her fine eyes were not clouded 

 nor had her face taken on the impassive look so common when 



