106 REMINISCENCES. 



funeral, as he stood in the scattering of snow, wrapped in a 

 long black funeral cloak, with a grave look of sad reverie. 



When, after an interval of many years, he again attended 

 a meeting of the Linnean Society, it was felt to be, and was 

 in fact, a serious undertaking ; one not to be determined on 

 without much sinking of heart, and hardly to be carried into 

 effect without paying a penalty of subsequent suffering. In 

 the same way a breakfast-party at Sir James Paget's, with 

 some of the distinguished visitors to the Medical Congress 

 (1881), was to him a severe exertion. 



The early morning was the only time at which he could 

 make any effort of the kind, with comparative impunity. 

 Thus it came about that the visits he paid to his scientific 

 friends in London were by preference made as early as ten in 

 the morning. For the same reason he started on his journeys 

 by the earliest possible train, and used to arrive at the houses 

 of relatives in London when they were beginning their 

 day. 



He kept an accurate journal of the days on which he 

 worked and those on which his ill health prevented him from 

 working, so that it would be possible to tell how many were 

 idle days in any given year. In this journal a little yellow 

 Letts's Diary, which lay open on his mantel-piece, piled on 

 the diaries of previous years he also entered the day on 

 which he started for a holiday and that of his return. 



The most frequent holidays were visits of a week to Lon- 

 don, either to his brother's house (6 Queen Anne Street), or 

 to his daughter's (4 Bryanston Street). He was generally 

 persuaded by my mother to take these short holidays, when 

 it became clear from the frequency of " bad days," or from 

 the swimming of his head, that he was being overworked. 

 He went unwillingly, and tried to drive hard bargains, stipu- 

 lating, for instance, that he should come home in five days 

 instead of six. Even if he were leaving home for no more 

 than a week, the packing had to be begun early on the pre- 

 vious day, and the chief part of it he would do himself. The 

 discomfort of a journey to him was, at least latterly, chiefly in 



