Hilda Wade

Hilda Wade

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hilda Wade, by Grant Allen (#5 in
our series by Grant Allen)
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Hilda Wade
Author: Grant Allen
Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4903] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 23,
2002]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, HILDA
WADE ***

This eBook was produced by Don Lainson.

HILDA WADE
A WOMAN WITH TENACITY OF PURPOSE
by
Grant Allen
1899

PUBLISHERS' NOTE
In putting before the public the last work by Mr. Grant Allen, the
publishers desire to express their deep regret at the author's unexpected
and lamented death--a regret in which they are sure to be joined by the
many thousand readers whom he did so much to entertain. A man of
curiously varied and comprehensive knowledge, and with the most
charming personality; a writer who, treating of a wide variety of
subjects, touched nothing which he did not make distinctive, he filled a
place which no man living can exactly occupy. The last chapter of this
volume had been roughly sketched by Mr. Allen before his final illness,
and his anxiety, when debarred from work, to see it finished, was
relieved by the considerate kindness of his friend and neighbour, Dr.
Conan Doyle, who, hearing of his trouble, talked it over with him,
gathered his ideas, and finally wrote it out for him in the form in which
it now appears--a beautiful and pathetic act of friendship which it is a
pleasure to record.

HILDA WADE

CHAPTER I

THE EPISODE OF THE PATIENT WHO DISAPPOINTED HER
DOCTOR
Hilda Wade's gift was so unique, so extraordinary, that I must illustrate
it, I think, before I attempt to describe it. But first let me say a word of
explanation about the Master.
I have never met anyone who impressed me so much with a sense of
GREATNESS as Professor Sebastian. And this was not due to his
scientific eminence alone: the man's strength and keenness struck me
quite as forcibly as his vast attainments. When he first came to St.
Nathaniel's Hospital, an eager, fiery-eyed physiologist, well past the
prime of life, and began to preach with all the electric force of his vivid
personality that the one thing on earth worth a young man's doing was
to work in his laboratory, attend his lectures, study disease, and be a
scientific doctor, dozens of us were infected by his contagious
enthusiasm. He proclaimed the gospel of germs; and the germ of his
own zeal flew abroad in the hospital: it ran through the wards as if it
were typhoid fever. Within a few months, half the students were
converted from lukewarm observers of medical routine into flaming
apostles of the new methods.
The greatest authority in Europe on comparative anatomy, now that
Huxley was taken from us, he had devoted his later days to the pursuit
of medicine proper, to which he brought a mind stored with luminous
analogies from the lower animals. His very appearance held one. Tall,
thin, erect, with an ascetic profile not unlike Cardinal Manning's, he
represented that abstract form of asceticism which consists in absolute
self-sacrifice to a mental ideas, not that which consists in religious
abnegation. Three years of travel in Africa had tanned his skin for life.
His long white hair, straight and silvery as it fell, just curled in one
wave-like inward sweep where it turned and rested on the stooping
shoulders. His pale face was clean-shaven, save for a thin and wiry
grizzled moustache, which cast into stronger relief the deep-set,
hawk-like eyes and the acute, intense, intellectual features. In some
respects, his countenance reminded me often of Dr. Martineau's: in
others it recalled the knife-like edge, unturnable, of his great

predecessor, Professor Owen. Wherever he went, men turned to stare at
him. In Paris, they took him