The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hilda Wade, by Grant Allen

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Title: Hilda Wade
A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose

Author: Grant Allen

Release Date: June 6, 2006 [EBook #4903]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HILDA WADE ***

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 i