As he conducted his private correspondence himself, my position as secretary gave me no insight into his affairs.

My duties consisted chiefly in corresponding with tradesmen, horse-dealers, and nursery gardeners, and noting the results of chemical experiments.
Mr.Fortescue was very abstemious, and took great care of his health, and if he was really verging on eighty (which I very much doubted), I thought he might not improbably live to be a hundred and ten and even a hundred and twenty.

He drank nothing, whatever, neither tea, coffee, cocoa, nor any other beverage, neither water nor wine, always quenching his thirst with fruit, of which he ate largely.

So far as I knew, the only liquid that ever passed his lips was an occasional liquor-glass of a mysterious decoction which he prepared himself and kept always under lock and key.
His breakfast, which he took every morning at seven, consisted of bread and fruit.
He ate very little animal food, limiting himself for the most part to fish and fowl, and invariably spent eight or nine hours of the twenty-four in bed.

We often discussed physiology, therapeutics, and kindred subjects, of which his knowledge was so extensive as to make me suspect that some time in his life he had belonged to the medical profession.
"The best physicians I ever met," he once observed, "are the Callavayas of the Andes--if the preservation and prolongation of human life is the test of medical skill.