Home Life 



The climax came in a fit of weeping, and, as Dr. Wallace 

 described it, the whole fabric of the universe was washed 

 away in a flood of tears. 



" On one occasion, when I was asked by Mrs. Wallace to 

 see Dr. Wallace professionally, he was lying on the sofa in 

 his study by the fire w^rapped up in rugs, having just got 

 over a bad shivering attack or rigor. His temperature was 

 104° Fahr., and all the other usual signs of acute fever were 

 present, but nothing to enable one to form a positive opinion 

 as to the cause. It must have been forty years since he had 

 been in the tropics, but I think he felt that it was an attack 

 of malarial fever. Knowing my patient, my treatment con- 

 sisted in asking what he was going to do for himself. 

 ' Well,' he said, ' I am going to have a hot bath and then go 

 to bed, and to-morrow I shall get up and go into the garden 

 as usual.' And he was out in the garden next day when I 

 went to see him. This was an instance, doubtless one of 

 many, of the ' will to live,' which carried him through a 

 long life. 



'^ Once, when he was talking about the gaps in the evolu- 

 tion of life, viz. between the inorganic and organic, between 

 vegetable and animal, and between animal and man. I asked, 

 ' Why postulate a beginning at all ? We are satisfied with 

 illimitability at one end, why not at the other ? ' ' For the 

 simple reason,' he said, ' that the mind cannot comprehend 

 anything that has never had a beginning.' 



*' What attracted me to him most, I think, was his remark- 

 able simplicity of language, whatever the topic of conversa- 

 tion might be, and this not the simplicity of the great mind 

 bringing itself down to the level of the ordinary individual, 

 but his customary mode of expression. I have heard him say 

 that he felt the need of the fluency of speech which Huxley 

 possessed, as he had to cast about for the expression that he 

 wanted. This may have been the case when he was lecturing, 

 but I certainly never noticed it in conversation." — H. E. L. 



Dr. Wallace was always interested in young men and 

 others who were going abroad with the intention of studying 

 Natural History, and gave them what advice and help he 



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