34 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. II. 



will ultimately be an honour to it as well.' ' All 

 your friends here,' she continues, ' are much 

 pleased, and say that you are a lucky young man 

 to meet with an appointment of the kind while 

 numbers of the profession hardly know which 

 way to turn. It is evident to me that your good 

 conduct, added to your abilities and industry, have 

 gained you the notice of the Professors. Should 

 you, my dear boy, be in want of money before 

 your quarter becomes due, do not hesitate to 

 say so.' 



It was in September 1827 that Richard Owen 

 first met Miss Clift. She was one day hanging 

 in her mother's room a pair of bell-pulls which 

 she had made ; but in getting down from the 

 step-ladder she overbalanced herself and had a 

 bad fall, which completely stunned her. Her 

 brother, William Home Clift, immediately called 

 in Owen, as the nearest surgeon at hand, to attend 

 to her injuries. When the young lady came to, the 

 first person she saw was her father's colleague. 

 ' I had once before seen him and spoken to him,' 

 she writes in her diary for 1827, ' but I had not 

 noticed him much, for it was on the occasion of 

 his being called in during William's illness, and 

 we were all rather frightened at the time.' Soon 

 after there appear in her diary sundry little notes 

 to this effect : — ' R. O. gave me a carved tortoise- 

 shell comb,' and ' R. O. gave me a volume of 

 Cowper's Poems.' 



