20 Concerning Kings leys in General i 



combating the pestilence in 1854, he was thinking 

 of the work his brother George had done during the 

 earher outbreak in 1849. 



In the autumn of 1 849 George Kingsley was 

 staying with his cousin Dr. Robert Wills (afterwards 

 Colonel Wills of Plas Bellin) in Flintshire ; when 

 the cholera invaded the district Dr. Wills and George 

 Kingsley devoted themselves with tireless energy to 

 the service of the poor people in Flint, Northop, and 

 the surrounding villages. Only the other day there 

 was found an old letter from Morgan Davies, 

 minister of St. Mark's, Northop, in which that 

 gentleman, as the representative of his congregation, 

 thanks Dr. George Kingsley for ' the great bene- 

 volence which he exercised towards the poor by his 

 constant and wholly gratuitous attendance upon 

 them by night and by day, when they were suffering 

 that fearful malady.' And, as Charles Kingsley says 

 when chronicling his brother's deeds in the shape of 

 Tom Thurnall, * he just thought nothing about 

 death and danger at all — always smiling, always 

 cheerful, always busy, yet never in a hurry, he went 

 up and down seemingly ubiquitous. Sleep he got 

 when he could, and food as often as he could . . . 

 the only person in the town who seemed to grow 

 healthier and actually happier as the work went on.' 



Another passage in Two Years Ago, descriptive 

 of the career of that self-willed and adventurous 

 young doctor was strangely prophetic of the future 

 of his prototype George Kingsley. ' Stay drudging 



