Tom Thurnall 19 



Cynical George Kingsley certainly appeared at 

 times, but his incisive manner of speaking made 

 him appear far more cynical than he really was. 

 Writing from Heidelberg to an intimate friend of 

 his, very shortly after these experiences in Paris, he 

 said, with a frank avowal somewhat unusual to him : 

 ' I have been a lonely man all my life, living within 

 myself and only using the external world as a means 

 of getting shreds and patches of colour with which 

 to deck my dream palace ; but I have always had an 

 intense longing for sympathy from my brother men — 

 a sympathy which I have never received, probably 

 from my own fault, except from my own brothers in 

 the flesh. So strong has been this feeling, that when 

 in the extreme solitude and isolation of foreign 

 travel I have often smoked a cigar for the pleasure 

 of asking a fellow human being for a light, and of 

 experiencing the sensation of brotherhood and 

 sympathy produced by the ready kindness of the 

 French or German man who granted my request, 

 and took his leave with a bow and a kindly word 

 which seemed to raise the trivial accommodation to 

 the might of a real kindness.' 



His heart always filled with compassion at the 

 sight of those who were suffering. Every one who 

 has read Two Years Ago will remember the cholera- 

 stricken town of Aberalva, and the young doctor 

 who rejoiced in having ' a good stand-up fight with 

 an old enemy.' When Charles Kingsley was 

 writing thus of the labours of Tom Thurnall in 



