MEDICAL EXPERIENCES 19 



and always made her journeys by coach or on 

 horseback. 



The experiment of acting as assistant to a 

 country doctor was not successful, and after a 

 couple of years Tegetmeier gave it up. Naturally, 

 most of the drudgery of the practice fell to the 

 lot of the assistant, whose chief occupation was 

 attendance on midwifery cases — work he never 

 liked. Further, he objected to the disturbance 

 of his night's rest occasioned thereby. And 

 frankly, my respected father-in-law did not 

 possess the " bedside manner " requisite to a 

 successful medical man. Had he persevered in 

 his profession, he might have achieved a sort of 

 junior Abernethy fame, but he was too downright, 

 too brusque ever to have become a fashionable 

 physician. Besides, his real interests (those of 

 his boyhood) were outside his professional work : 

 he kept pigeons and poultry at Brackley, I am 

 told, and there laid the foundation of that 

 extensive knowledge of birds which subsequently 

 was to stand him in such good stead. He also 

 kept, and of course observed, bees, and spent 

 some of his leisure among his flowers. 



Of gardening he was always fond ; and almost 

 up to the last would, in his Finchley home, super- 

 intend the jobbing gardener's work, prune the 

 fruit trees, and generally potter about among his 

 beloved plants. He was a keen and successful 

 grower of apples and pears, and one trick he had 



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