Mr. Waterton at Home 



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charist, and heard him bear his part at vespers in the 

 hymn of St. Bernard : 



" My comfort in the wilderness ; 

 But oh ! when face to face !" 



He slept on the ground, with his head on a hollowed 

 out beech block, in a little room next to the chapel, 

 or in his Brazilian hammock, and always awoke him- 

 self at three by Sir Walter Raleigh's clock, which had 

 been removed from the Knight's house at Chelsea, and 

 stood near the staircase entry of his bed-room. The 

 first hour so snatched from sleep he " gave to the 

 health and preservation of the soul." Hermit as he 

 seemed in his habits and guise, he entered keenly into 

 everything in the outer world, and loved dearly to 

 find that he was not forgotten among naturalists. 

 " Well, Mr. Waterton ! The Times has got hold of 

 you to-day" we said to him, when the papers came 

 in, and we had to read twice over to him (and a very 

 pleasant task it was) a column letter signed u An Ape" 

 which treated of Professor Huxley and his hippo- 

 campus theory, and alluded most affectionately to 

 " My dear friend, Charles Waterton!' If he was in 

 London, he never omitted to visit the Zoological 

 Gardens, and he went there we believe for the last 

 time to examine the retractile claws of the cheetah. 

 The people stared famously when they saw him enter 

 the cage with the keeper, holding his right hand at a 

 certain conventional distance from the ground. One 

 woman said, " Law ! I'll be bound that's the Doctor!' 

 " No, madam'' he replied, never taking his eye off the 

 beast as it crouched in the corner, "you're mistaken, it's 

 only the Apothecary ; " an answer which gave him great 

 delight, and puzzled the old lady still more. He left 

 home very little, but every Christmas he repaired to 

 his old college at Stonyhurst, for a week, to meet his 

 friends and see the boys act Shakspeare. 



As a modern medicine man, he believed thoroughly 

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