Chap. V.] HIS DISLIKE OF ROUTINE WOEK. 47 



anyone " trod on his toes ; " then he spared not his foe, but with 

 his pen he out deep until he made his adversary writhe again. 



My father never feared responsibility, neither did he fear 

 asserting that which he considered to be the truth. Where others 

 shrunk, he ventured ; where others wavered, he decided : he was 

 essentially a man of action. He trusted his own- powers and 

 acted up to them. He had a great idea of persons forming them- 

 selves decided opinions upon a subject and acting up to them. 

 He writes to his son from abroad, on a question in dispute, " You 

 must come to the front and form a clear, decided opinion, and 

 contend for a very definite course of action upon the best opinion 

 that can be formed." 



With my father's love for action, and with his restless dis- 

 position, it is a wonder that he did not take the management of 

 his house into his hands ; for that, however, he ever showed an 

 indifference quite remarkable. He had his own peculiar ways 

 of managing his own money matters. So much a year he put 

 by for house expenditure and for his family, and so much he 

 allowed himself for pocket-money. What he allowed for himself 

 was mostly spent on treats and presents to the different members 

 of his family, or for charity. So long as no more money was 

 required for the house, or for the necessities appertaining to 

 the family's social condition, well and good ; he then troubled 

 himself but little, if indeed at all, how the money was expended. 

 Especially did the evil grow upon him in later life of a dislike 

 of routine work. He detested attending to any matters of 

 detail, and liked instead to soar in the regions above, and pro- 

 pound those noble generalizations of physical force and mental 

 phenomena, which it has been more especially the object of 

 this work to show. 



In charity he gave not a little, and from what his family have 

 learnt from persons who have proved grateful for his bounty, it 

 seems that in the bestowing of his charity he let not his left 

 hand know what his right hand did. But although he was very 

 beneficent, yet he was wise in his acts of charity ; for he liked to 

 assist persons by procuring for them some occupation befitting 

 them, that they might thereby become independent workers of 

 their own livelihood instead of living upon the charity of others. 

 This little trait is seen in the following anecdote. For some 

 years a poor woman sat on the steps of a house situated at the 

 corner of a street which he daily passed, and solicited alms of 

 the passers-by. One day it struck my father, Why should not 



