262 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



formerly so stiff and self-reliant, had learned to repose more 

 and more easily on my mother's tact and wisdom ; she 

 had, by a magnificent effort, trained herself in mature life 

 to take an interest in subjects and in a course of technical 

 study which had been foreign to her inclination. She was 

 now a part of his intellectual as well as his emotional life. 

 Not a rotifer was held captive under the microscope, not 

 a crustacean of an unknown species shook a formidable 

 clapper at the naturalist, but the cry of " Emily ! Emily ! " 

 brought the keen eye and sympathetic lips on to the scene 

 in a moment. Under her care, all that was warmest and 

 brightest in Philip Gosse's character had been developed ; 

 he had ceased to shun his kind ; he had lost his shy- 

 ness, and had become one of the most genial, if still one 

 of the most sententious of men. Every year this mellow- 

 ing influence became more apparent ; every year brought 

 more of sunlight into the circle of their hopes and interests. 

 But now the gloom was to close again over their life, and 

 they were to pass together, through anguish of body and 

 mind, into the valley of the shadow of death. 



Late in April, my mother became conscious of a local 

 discomfort in her left breast, the result, she supposed, of 

 some slight bruise. But on May I, being with her old 

 friends at Tottenham, Miss Mary Stacey persuaded her 

 to consult a physician, who rather crudely and roughly 

 pronounced it to be cancer. She returned very calmly to 

 her home, and in the course of the evening she quietly told 

 her husband. Next day they called on Dr. Hyde Salter, 

 F.R.S., and on Mr. (now Sir) James Paget, both of whom 

 declared that the presence of that disease was indubitable. 

 Each of these eminent practitioners recommended a 

 surgical operation. But from this the sufferer shrank. My 

 mother had an excessive dread of physical pain, and in 

 those days the modern ingenuities of anaesthetics were 



