His dress was peculiar,--a snuff-colored coat reaching to his knees, a long vest of the same color, buff breeches, and a three-cornered hat. With him the fashion never changed; he had but one suit; not an extra coat, hat, or even two handkerchiefs. When his wardrobe gave out, and he was forced to see his tailor, he became very nervous. He would walk the room in agony, give orders to have the tailor sent for, and then immediately countermand the same. His shoes for fifty years were of one pattern; and when he took them off they were put in one place behind a door, and woe to the servant who accidentally displaced them. He hung his old three-cornered hat on one peg at his house, and when he attended the meetings of the Royal Society he had a peg in the hall known as "Cavendish's peg." If, through accident, it was taken by some member before his arrival, he would stop, look at the occupied peg, and then turn on his heel, and go back to his house. When he went to the meetings, he walked in the middle of the street, never on the sidewalk; and he invariably took the same route. Upon reaching the steps leading to the rooms, he would stop, hesitate, put his hand on the door-handle, and look about timidly, and sometimes return at a rapid pace. His cane, which he carried for fifty years, he placed upright in his left boot, which he took off at the door, covering his foot with a slipper. Once inside the rooms of the Royal Society, and surrounded by the most distinguished men of England and the world, he became excessively shy, and read his wonderful papers in an awkward manner. Applause of any kind he could not bear; and if in conversation any one praised his researches or papers, he would turn away abruptly, as if highly indignant. If he was appealed to as authority upon any point, he would dart away, and perhaps quit the hall for the evening. This man of great genius and vast acquirements was incapable of understanding or enduring praise or flattery. He sought in every possible way to escape recognition or notice, listened attentively to conversation, but seldom asked questions; never spoke of himself, or of what he had accomplished in the world of science. Cavendish was a man possessed of vast wealth, and, when he died, he was the richest bank-owner in all England.