218 LIFE OF TEGETMEIER 



or apportioned to each. Years before this, on 

 giving up his interest in pigeons, he presented 

 to his friend A. H. Osman, editor of the Racing 

 Pigeon, all his books on the subject, as related in 

 Chapter VIII. So many books, curios and orna- 

 ments and other things were thus disposed of 

 long before he left Finchley for his son's house 

 at Hampstead, that many of the rooms at 

 Alexandra Grove were painfully depleted of their 

 proper contents. It often struck me as pathetic, 

 but to his practical mind that aspect of his 

 unselfish action never seemed to occur. It was 

 from similar reasons, and because he knew more 

 about their value than did we, that he disposed 

 of his collections of Shelley, Van Dyck and the 

 Darwin letters some considerable time before 

 his death. 



Tegetmeier was a man of great physical courage, 

 and once when a burglar broke into the house 

 and the old man of ninety years was awakened 

 by the cries of his sister-in-law, he seized a sword- 

 stick, which he kept handy in his bedroom, and 

 rushed to attack the intruder, without waiting 

 to don normal attire. But bv this time the 

 burglar, alarmed at the outcry, had escaped 

 through the window he had opened to enter. 

 Tegetmeier always kept this very effective weapon 

 (it now hangs in my room) in his bedroom (not 

 in the hall for the intruder to use against himself, 

 as he said) as well as a loaded pistol, and of later 



