12 THE DARWIN FAMILY. 



was 24 stone, but afterwards increased much in weight. 

 His chief mental characteristics were his powers of obser- 

 vation and his sympathy, neither of which have I ever seen 

 exceeded or even equalled. His sympathy was not only 

 with the distresses of others, but in a greater degree with 

 the pleasures of all around him. This led him to be always 

 scheming to give pleasure to others, and, though hating 

 extravagance, to perform many generous actions. For 



instance, Mr. B , a small manufacturer in Shrewsbury, 



came to him one day, and said he should be bankrupt unless 

 he could at once borrow j 10,000, but that he was unable to 

 give any legal security. My father heard his reasons for 

 believing that he could ultimately repay the money, and from 

 [his] intuitive perception of character felt sure that he was 

 to be trusted. So he advanced this sum, which was a very 

 large one for him while young, and was after a time repaid. 



" I suppose that it was his sympathy which gave him un- 

 bounded power of winning confidence, and as a consequence 

 made him highly successful as a physician. He began to 

 practise before he was twenty-one years old, and his fees 

 during the first year paid for the keep of two horses and a 

 servant On the following year his practice was large, and so 

 continued for about sixty years, when he ceased to attend on 

 any one. His great success as a doctor was the more remark- 

 able, as he told me that he at first hated his profession so 

 much that if he had been sure of the smallest pittance, or if 

 his father had given him any choice, nothing should have 

 induced him to follow it. To the end of his life, the thought 

 of an operation almost sickened him, and he could scarcely 

 endure to see a person bled a horror which he has trans- 

 mitted to me and I remember the horror which I felt as a 

 schoolboy in reading about Pliny (I think) bleeding to death 

 in a warm bath. . . . 



" Owing to my father's power of winning confidence, many 

 patients, especially ladies, consulted him when suffering from 



