Jula Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899

[37] was so constituted that four hours of sleep nightly sufficed to keep him in health. This was fortunate for him, as he had an extensive practice, and was liable to be called out at all hours of the night. A candle always stood on a table beside his pillow, and with it a pile of books and papers, which he habitually perused long before the coming of daylight. It so happened, however, that he waked one morning at about four of the clock, and saw his wife, wrapped in shawls, sitting near the fire, reading something by candlelight. The following conversation ensued:—

‘Eliza, what book is that you are reading?’ ‘ “Uncle Tom's cabin,” dear.’

‘Is it? I don't need to know anything more about it—it must be the greatest book of the age.’

His humor was extravagant. I once heard him exclaim, ‘How brilliant is the light which streams through the fissure of a cracked brain!’ Again he spoke of ‘a fellow who could n't go straight in a ropewalk.’ His anecdotes of things encountered in the exercise of his profession were most amusing.

He found us seated in the drawing-room, one evening, to receive a visit from a very shy professor of Brown University. The doctor, surveying the group, seized this poor man, lifted him from the floor, and carried him round the circle, to