Darwin shared with other great men whose natures approach perfection, an unusual sympathy with and power over dogs, and a love for children. The latter trait is most beautifully expressed in a note which was found amongst his papers, giving an account of his little girl, who died at the age of ten years. Written for his own eyes only, it is a most delicate and tender composition, and should be pondered side by side with his frank and--necessarily to some readers--almost terrifying statement of his thoughts on religion.
Darwin's only self-indulgence was snuff-taking. In later years he smoked an occasional cigarette, but his real "little weakness" was snuff. It is difficult to suppose that he did not benefit by the habit, careful as he was to keep it in check. He kept his snuff-box in the hall of his house, so that he should have to take the trouble of a walk in order to get a pinch, and not have too easy an access to the magic powder.
The impression made on him by his own success and the overwhelming praise and even reverence which he received from all parts of the world, was characteristic of his charming nature. Darwin did not receive these proofs of the triumphs of his views with the solemnity of an inflated reformer who has laid his law upon the whole world of thought. Quite otherwise. He was simply delighted. He chuckled gayly over the spread of his views, almost as a sportsman--and we must remember that in his young days he _was_ a sportsman--may rejoice in the triumphs of his own favorite "racer," or even as a schoolboy may be proud and happy in the success of "the eleven" of which he is captain. He delighted to count up the sale of his books, not specially for the money value it represented, though he was too sensible to be indifferent to that, but because it proved to him that his long and arduous life of thought, experiment, and literary work was not in vain. To have been or to have posed as being indifferent to popular success, would have required a man of less vivid sympathy with his fellow-men: to have been puffed up and pretentious would have needed one less gifted with a sense of humor, less conscious of the littleness of one man, however talented, in the vast procession of life on the earth's surface. His delight in his work and its success was of the perfect and natural kind, which he could communicate to his wife and daughters, and might have been shared by a child.