threw up his book and hands, and fell back, the chair sliding sharply from under him, and he poured forth shrieks, loud and continuous, stamping his feet madly on the ground.  My father rushed to him, and, while the women looked out for the usual remedies of cold water and hand-rubbing, applied a strong pressure to his side, kneading it with his hands; and the patient seemed gradually to be relieved by that process.  This happened about the time when he was most anxious for the result of the trial which was to deprive him of his children.  In the intervals he sought relief in reading, in conversation,—­which especially turned upon classic literature,—­in freedom of thought and action, and in play with the children of the house.  I can remember well one day when we were both for some long time engaged in gambols, broken off by my terror at his screwing up his long and curling hair into a horn, and approaching me with rampant paws and frightful gestures as some imaginative monster.

It was at this time that the incident happened which has been mentioned by my father.  A poor woman had been attending her son before a criminal court in London.  As they were returning home at night, fatigue and anxiety so overcame her that she fell on the ground in convulsions, where she was found by Shelley.  He appealed to a very opulent person, who lived on the top of the hill, asking admission for the woman into the house, or the use of the carriage, which had just set the family down at the door.  The stranger was repulsed with the cold remark that impostors swarmed everywhere, and that his own conduct was “extraordinary.”  The good Samaritan, whom the Christian would not help, warned the uncharitable man that such treatment of the poor is sometimes chastised by hard treatment of the rich in days of trouble; and I heard Shelley describe the manner in which the gentleman retreated into his mansion, exclaiming, “God bless me, Sir! dear me, Sir!” In the account of the occurrence given by my father, he has omitted to mention that Shelley and the woman’s son, who had already carried her a considerable way up the main hill of Hampstead, brought her on from the inhospitable mansion to our house in their arms; and I believe, that, the son’s strength failing, for some way down the hill into the Vale of Health Shelley carried her on his back.  I cannot help contrasting this action of the wanderer with the careful self-regard of another friend who often came to see us, though I do not remember that any of us were ever inside his doors.  He was, I believe, for some time actually a pensioner on Shelley’s generosity, though he ultimately rose to be comparatively wealthy.  One night, when he had been visiting us, he was in trouble because no person had been sent from a tavern at the top of the hill to light him up the pathway across the heath.  That same self-caring gentleman afterwards became one of the apologists who most powerfully contributed to mislead public opinion in regard to his benefactor.