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ODD   HOURS




         OF




  A  PHYSICIAN. 
 
ODD   HOURS
A  PHYSICIAN.
BY
JOHN DARBY. Cbi'Sixio
   '*«.r£lonP'
    PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
       1872. 

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
          J. B.  LIPPINCOTT &  CO.
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress  at Washington. 
CONTENTS.
                                                PAGE
Antecedents  ..........    7
Success.........   .    .   10
Spending...........17
Principles..........28
Law............43
Correlation..........51
The Philosopher's Stone.......81
To-day...........99
Living...........119
Wise and Otherwise........143
Utopia   ...........166
In the Country.........199
Addendum..........241
(v) 
 
Odd  Hours of  a Physician.
               ANTECEDENTS.

 A BOOK, as a man,  has  antecedents.   Acquaint-
      ance with either is  not, perhaps,  better to be
 commenced than by learning something of such pre-
 associations.
   The antecedents of this little volume are found in the
 circumstances, that the author having written a  book
 which was not without a satisfactory share of success, it
 brought from his publisher a request for a second; and
 this so persuasively worded—as reference was had to the
 banker—that to have  denied  it would  have been to
 admit that a person may be afflicted with the cacoethes
 scribendi,  and at the same time be insusceptible to the
 solid arguments of the book-makers,—a thing, so far as
 the author can learn, never yet known, and not well to
 be made a precedent by anybody.
  Terms settled (it is comfortable to have all responsi-
 bility on the back of the publisher), it remained simply
 to decide  as to the nature of the new book, and to
secure consent to the employment upon the  title-page
of a name  differing from that  upon the  first book, as
well as that on the record  page of the author's family
Bible; not  that a nom de plume designates an especial
modesty, or is indicative of any particular indifference:
                                      (7) 
8        ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
 on the contrary, it may be doubted if such shielding of
 one's  identity is not  rather of questionable significa-
 tion.  Without consuming pages,  however,  in the dis-
 cussion of this matter, it may be asserted, without fear
 of successful  contradiction,  that  nowadays, as  every-
 body runs into print,  the private  station has become
 the seat of honor, and one may not be rebuked  in  de-
 siring  to be classed with the most respectable company.
   Again,  one may  not  be  averse  to  giving  forth
 thoughts, good, bad, or indifferent, as they may prove,
 yet not deem  it necessary to the influence of the writing
 that in propria persona he be associated with them.  If
 a thing be good, what odds who created it ? And if it be
 bad, certainly the  less  it has  to support it the better.
 Still another  reason which  may influence a writer in
 disguising the ego is, that in this very practical age the
 world has come to judge of a man  by what it is pleased
 to term his stability.   A man must be inferred  to be
 thinking of one thing all the time,—"sticking to  his
 work," as we  have it.   A doctor is not to don a straw
 hat,  neither is he to take off his  black coat.   A black-
smith had  much better set fire to his  smithy than let a
patron find a work on Paleology upon his workbench.
  Everybody thinks, thinks  all kinds  of thoughts, and
about all kinds of things, and the thoughts of every-
body are interesting  to somebody.  The thoughts  of
Socrates, and  of his pupil Plato,  interest the world,
and  have  done so for  the  past two thousand  years.
A  village  politician  or metaphysician is  not  without
his share of auditors, even though  the coffee-bags and
barrels in the back part of the country store furnish
abundance of  seat-room for  all of them.  I will  write 
ANTECEDENTS.
9
down my odd  thoughts, then,  I  say, and these  shall
make the book.   If they make not  a good book, nor an
interesting one, I can  only regret it, consoling myself
with the reflection that there must  at  least be found
people enough on the same plane with it to compensate
the publisher; and he satisfied,  I am sure I should be.
One cannot expect everybody to be his friends, or that
overmany people should be able even to find half an
hour's entertainment in his company.  The book, then,
is to be the odd thoughts of odd hours.  Neander, or
the village  optimist, as  you may find it.  If it shall
please you to sit down with me, we can at least com-
pare "life thoughts." 
SUCCESS.
"'THHE whole secret of a man's  success in life,"
    JL   said  a lecturer at a college  commencement,
"is  to  be  found in  three  words,—Choose,  Begin,
Stick;"  and  in  his  conclusions he  was, I am con-
vinced,  about right.
  A man engaged in a calling for which he has neither
predilection nor talent has, in his pursuit, simply a life
of toil:  no ambition inspires him, neither does satisfac-
tion in what he accomplishes cheer him;  the life em-
ployment of an individual should constitute the pleasure
of the  life, thus  overcoming the  first, greatest, and
generally most lasting drawback,—the  retardation of
friction.
  To know what  one may like, and what he shall con-
tinue to like, should be felt to be of vital consequence,
so far as the selection of a pursuit  is  concerned;  and
from the necessities of the relations of "short lives with
long arts," it is seen to be a matter which,  in its settle-
ment, should have as little delay as possible. For some,
happily', this  question is settled  by the  nature of their
organization, some one faculty having development  in
that excess which makes to the ruling passion or incli-
nation  all others  subservient.   Thus, we would say of
Buffon   that he was born  a naturalist; or  of Leon,
the  delineator of  Sappho,  that he was made by nature
a painter;  of Daedalus, that he grew an architect.
Lionardo, the Italian, as a child  exhibited such power
      (10) 
SUCCESS.
it
in art, that when, in a picture of Christ's Baptism, he
painted for his preceptor the figure of an angel, Ve-
rocchio threw down his brush and declared, in his cha-
grin,  that he would never take it up again, " for that a
child  had  excelled him."   Titian, when in pinafores,
made fame by creating  pictures from the expressed
juice  of flowers.   Murillo,  as  a boy, was an artist
whose works never lacked sale.   The genius of Ameri-
ghi was  so near  the surface, that a single month at
color-grinding with a Milan artist converted him into
Caravaggio.
  Genius, such  as these  exampled, is temperament;
physiologically speaking, this  is  certainly the  right
name  to  call it by,—and  men  so constituted  can no
more be else than what they come out than may the worm
of the cocoon save itself from becoming  the butterfly,
or than may men of large viscera deny their lymphatic
relations, or the man of  nerve repudiate activity.
  But, intellectually speaking, the majority of men are
without temperaments, or, if not this,  they are at least
not sufficiently one-sided to have the peculiarity remark
itself.   For all,  however, there are points about even
these stronger than other points,—parts which will en-
dure  the stress  of burdens  better than  other parts.
These are the men that "choosing" concerns.

           HOW SHALL SUCH MEN CHOOSE?

  If a man might select to go to some particular place
led to by various ways, he naturally desires to take that
one which may be most in consonance with his habits
and inclinations.   Now, if to him all the roads be alike 
12       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
unknown, he may only inform himself concerning their
various attractions by two means: either he may learn
of others who have journeyed over the roads, or,  other-
wise, he  must travel each  for himself.   The first of
these would, without doubt, be  the most time-saving.
The second, however, seems,  by common consent, in
America at least, to  be the adopted way.   It is,  I sup-
pose, in obedience to the injunction,  "Try all things,
and hold fast that which is good."   This latter plan
has, without doubt, its  advantages, which none may
dispute.  It has, however, unfortunately been allowed
to consume the whole life of many a  man.  Whatever
may be the manner of the  choice, such choice  would
seem important or unimportant as  the man is with or
without temperament.

                     SUCCESS.

  A  wise choice in occupation always,  and to every
character of individual, considers the length and breadth
of a work.  It has often enough come even to my own
observation  to see  grand  men stranded by having
started their  boats  in a wrong direction, running up
stream, with the water growing shallower and shallower,
instead of down towards the river and towards the sea.
One  of the finest minds among my acquaintances lies
high and dry upon a carpenter's bench.   Had his boat
been started right, it would to-day have been on the
highest  and most vital wave  of the  ocean  of  meta-
physics.   I have seen  shopkeepers  measuring tape,
bound in tape,—bound  as fast as was Laocoon  in the
folds of the serpents, and being crushed as hastily out of 
SUCCESS.
13
the joys of living,—who, had their  business been to
measure the lines of the universe, would have invented
planispheres with Hipparchus, or taught the principles
of trigonometrical calculations with Ptolemy.

                      BEGIN.

  This is the second word in the secret of our lecturer.
A choice,  however good it may be, is, of course, to no
purpose without  a  beginning  of work.   Some  persons
are good enough in the making of the choice, but they
are all bad in  the  making of a beginning;  without a
beginning there can be no middle or  end to a thing.
  The time that a man shall begin  a  thing may be a
matter of circumstances; thus, I once knew a young
man who had  to struggle through five years of labor in
a blacksmith's shop before money sufficient could be
saved to buy the tickets matriculating him into  a medi-
cal school.    Doctor  Samuel Jackson, so  long  the
eminent Professor of  Physiology in the University of
Pennsylvania,  sold medicine behind the counter of the
apothecary until forty years old.   A  famous publisher,
whose choice was the  ownership of a great newspaper,
had to  toil twenty years as office-boy, clerk, printer,
and book-maker, before  his work could  be commenced.
But a time to  begin that may be recognized by every-
body is, "The  earliest  time  possible."  Nothing is
more adverse  to success than putting a thing off; not
only does  it shorten the span of life, but it shortens and
debilitates the nature-of a man.   He who acts on  the
political motto of Talleyrand is apt to find to-morrow
a day that never arrives.   Just this moment there comes 
14
ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
to my mind an artist for whose abilities I have great
respect.  The  choice of the man  is to paint a great
historical picture, but each day he waits on the morrow
for an order, and he has so waited, day after day, for
years.  Yet in these  years hours have been profitlessly
spent,  quite  sufficient in number,  I am sure,  to have
created his image.   This man is unwisely putting off
his beginning.   The sooner after  a choice is made a
beginning is commenced, the better.   Begin to-day, if
so it may be, to-day is sure.

                       STICK.

  No one thing  has more effect  upon a result than
sticking.   The aphorism "that the  trickling drop wears
away the stone,"  is not, by any means, too old to deny
it a repetition : to stick is to conquer a success.   One
may not, perhaps, imagine  a thing that will not yield
before sticking.   To see a man change from point to
point is  to get his measure without asking, and  is to
prognose his future without needing a gift of prophecy.
Sticking gave to Kepler the laws of planetary motion.
Of Luther it has been remarked, "That it was a great
miracle a poor friar should be able  to stand against the
Pope,  and that it was even a  greater that he should
prevail."  In an age when the voice of the church pos-
sessed among  the people the  influence of God's voice
itself,  Leo  X., in bull, solemnly condemned  and ex-
communicated Luther.  But the reformer heeded the
interruption so little that he was even spurred by it to
the  conception of the  idea of  a  church  of  his own.
When Charles V. summoned Luther  to  Worms  and 
SUCCESS.
IS
emperor and princes united in his condemnation, it
produced in Wartburg Castle a  translation of the New
Testament,—never was there recantation—never vacil-
lation.  Sticking resulted in the Reformation.  Huy-
gens,  by sticking, evolved the truth of the application
of the pendulum for the corrections of the  irregulari-
ties of the "clock, having first discovered  that  the vi-
brations made in arcs of a cycloid, however unequal
they were in extent, were all equal in time.  Galileo
and Huygens revolve with time, as the two hands go
around the face of the clock they created.
   Sticking always results in something,—it results in
the man doing his work.   Whether the work be  famous
or infamous, useful or useless, depends, first, and most
importantly, as  the  individual is concerned,  on  the
choice he has made; it depends, secondly, upon  cir-
cumstances.  Every man owes it to the relations of his
life to discharge a duty;  and he is  bound, in  con-
tributing to the common fund, to do his  best.  What
such best shall be is not always  what one might  desire.
But a man of two talents who brings other  two, is every
whit  as manly a worker  as  he who, starting with ten,
increases them to twenty.   A true judgment of a man
considers  not the  result of his work  more than the
tools with which a result is  obtained.  Newton, in
adding gravitation to the laws  worked out by Kepler,
deserved not the credit of the latter,—the stem of the
apple had at least had a nick put into it in the "Intro-
duct, ad mot Martis."  Never did Giotto more  impress
Cimabue than when he showed him the crude drawing
of the sheep, made by the shepherd boy with a bit of
broken slate upon the smooth rock.  Or, perhaps, never 
16        ODD  HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

did Da Yinci exhibit  the force of genius to the inspi-
ration of others more fully than when, on  the fig-tree
stick, he executed  his work of the Gorgon, the snakes,
lizards, and toads, which the peasant was afraid to
touch.
  A noble mind wavers  never in doubt of itself; the
estimate of its power, and of its work, is not from with-
out, but always comes from within.  It asks not, neither
heeds what the world says; but in whatever situation it
finds its place, it recognizes that " station may not honor
man,  but it is man  who honors a station."  And that it
very well may be that
         " More true joy Marcellus,  exiled, feels
          Than Caesar, with a Senate at his heels." 
SPENDING.
" ,r I ^IS pleasant,"  says Cowper,  in  his  suggestive
    JL   poem of  "The Task,"

                 "Through the loopholes of retreat
         To peep out at the world.  To see the stir
         Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd ;
         To hear the roar she sends through all her gates,
         At a safe distance, where the dying sound
         Falls a soft murmur on the uninjured ear."

  Life at twenty and life at forty,—there is a great dif-
ference.   Which has  the advantage is only, perhaps,
to be answered  by individual  experience.   Twenty
years  ago I read Alphonse de Lamartine's  "Raphael,"
and pulse to pulse did  my heart  beat with his creation.
I, too, floated over still lakes in  dying sunsets.   I, too,
caught the soft music of the sphere as it came from
ruby lips  and  pearly  gateways.   I,  too, breathed  the
odors of Araby as a warm breath swept over  my cheek.
  Twenty years ago, just after finishing  the  reading of
this book, it was carried  off by a fair friend.  And at
forty, on my very birthday, was  it brought back to  me.
At forty, then, I re-read Raphael.  Alas and alack! the
lakes  had  grown  rough and  damp, the sunsets were
tame  and cold; upon pearly teeth I had seen sordes,
and  ruby lips had shown the blush  of rouge;  odors
had grown faint, or, what amounted to the same thing,
my  nerves had diminished in their  sensibility.   Then
                         2              (17) 
18       ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

I cast aside forever Raphael, and said  to  myself, The
time of the lake is passed, and you are upon the river;
and, even from  the river must you go on to the things
of the sea.
  *  *   *  *  Yor an hour I have been sitting, this
page before me, making rings of smoke, and watching
them as suddenly they whisk through a crack made by
the  lowered sash.   *  *  *  The lines commencing
the  paper I indited as a text for something I desired
to write about life; but through  some influence almost
beyond  my control, when the soft dallyings of Cow-
per  had  been written,  the pen seemed  determined to
add  a something  from  Bailey.   And  this is what  it
wanted to write :

          " Use, use is life, and he most truly lives
           Who uses best."

  Twenty years ago, for the first time in my life, did I
copy Cowper's  lines, and, more than  this, attempted
an essay  on them.   To-day, this moment, the paper is
before  me, yellow  snd  dim, from  its long hiding in a
dark corner of my desk.  Twenty years ago  were the
days of Raphael.   I cannot, to-day, I find, copy for
my publisher the yellow manuscript.  It may not, then,
be esteemed  strange if, just here, a thought  intrudes
concerning the  propriety of what, in these odd hours,
shall now be written.  What may be thought of these
pages when  another twenty years are passed ?  Shall
the  judgment of sixty  differ from that  of forty, as has
forty from that  of twenty?   Well, I say to myself, and
I believe, this will be so ; yet, at sixty, I doubt me if
they would get  rewritten. 
SPENDING.
!9
   But my text answers  not the  requirements of  the
 thoughts;  I will get a better from Shakspeare :

         " One man in his time plays many parts,
          His acts being seven ages.  At first, the infant,
          Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
          And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
          And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
          Unwillingly to school;  and then the lover,
          Sighing like a furnace,  with a woful ballad
          Made to his mistress' eyebrow; then a soldier,
          Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,
          Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
          Seeking  the bubble reputation
          Even in  the cannon's mouth ; and then, the justice,
          In fair, round belly, with good capon lined,
          With eves severe, and beard of formal cut,
          Full of wise saws and modern instances,
          And so he plays his part.  The sixth age shifts
          Into the  lean and slippered pantaloon ;
          With spectacles on  nose, and pouch on side;
          His youthful hose well  saved, a world  too wide
          For his shrunk shank ; and his big, manly voice,
          Turning  again toward a childish treble, pipes
          And whistles in his sound.  Last scene of all,
          That ends this strange,  eventful history,
          Is second childishness,  and mere oblivion;
          Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."


   Shakspeare, says an  eminent  barrister  and  critic,  is,
in his  truths, like  the inspirations of the  Bible, "the
study of them enlarges and widens the meaning."  We
refute this, however, in this particular instance at least,
I think, in  asking if the poet himself is sans  anything
of the true life, even after two hundred years of burial.
   It  is, then, of true life I  would write, and the Avon
poet, who I  may not admit  in  his description to com- 
20
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN
pass life, does yet very well remind me of what I would
say.
  The two things most alike in this world are living and
shopping.  A man  has  to  spend of life as  he  has of
gold,—just so  much.   As he parts with this  capital
wisely or unwisely, so he gets in return good or evil.
If, having but a single  dollar, I enter a shop, and in
the purchase of any one thing—a handkerchief,-  if you
please—I lay it all out, when  supper-time comes  round
I must  go  hungry.   If  in  riotous living I  spend my
thousands,  I may some time lack the  shelter  which
pennies of the thousands might have provided.  A man
cannot have the "penny and  the whistle."
  The capital of human life is, no  doubt,  for a wise
purpose, a  limited one.   To  invest it  seems to be the
problem most deserving attention.   This capital is in
the hands of a man without restrictions; where he in-
vests it, and how, is his own  concern.   Quickly, how-
ever,  is  he to learn that investments mean permanency,
and that to change these  at will,  is  about the most
difficult of difficult things.
  To  shop  wisely with the money of life, is to consider
well,  for what one spends it, as a man buys, he keeps;
never, indeed, can a purchase  be fully gotten clear of, or
exchanged; this, every  buyer will surely find out.
  A young man with his capital fresh  in the pouch of
his  nature  starts out  to the  shop.   Here is plenty to
attract  him, no  lack  of objects to invite  his outlay.
Yet, even if he have but a very common share of judg-
ment, he recognizes that there is  choice to be made;
his  money  may not possess him of all  that  he sees —
what shall he buy?  How shall he know what to buy? 
SPENDING.
21
   Twenty years ago I translated from the German of
Jean Paul Richter the following story.   Let the young
man with his money in his pouch read  it:
   "On a New-Year's night stood an  old man at  his
window and looked, with a glance of fearful despair, up
to  the unmovable, ever-blooming heaven, and down
upon the still, pure, white earth, whereupon now was
no one so joyless and sleepless as he; for near him stood
his grave, and it was covered with the snow of age, not
with the green  foliage of youth.  From  a whole rich
life had he brought nothing but  errors, sins, and bitter
memories, a wasted body and  a desolate soul, a breast
full of poison, and an old age full of repentance.  To-
day the beautiful days of his youth reappeared .like spec-
ters, and reconveyed  him to that lovely morning when
his father had placed him  upon the crossway  of life,
which leads, on  the right,  over a sunny pathway into a
large, quiet land full of light and harvests, and which,
on the left, plunges into the mole-walks of vice, into a
black cave full of distilling poison, full of hissing  snakes,
and of dark, sultry vapors.
   "Alas! the snakes were hanging on his breast, and
the drops of poison were upon  his tongue, and he knew
now where he was.  Distracted, and with unspeakable
grief, he thus appealed to  Heaven : Give me back my
youth, O Father! place me again upon the crossway,
that I may choose otherwise.   But his father and his
youth were gone long ago.   He saw ignes-fatui dancing
upon the marshes and disappearing in the cemetery, and
he said, These are my foolish days.   He saw a  star  fly
from heaven, and, glittering in its fall, it vanished upon
the earth.  That am I, said his bleeding heart, and the 
22        ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN

snake-teeth of  repentance digged deeper and deeper
into his wounds.  His flaming imagination showed him
flying night-walkers upon the roofs, and the wind-mill
lifted  threateningly its arms for his destruction, and a
skull, having been left behind in the house of the dead,
assumed gradually his  features.   In  the  midst of this
struggle the music for the New Year flowed down from
the steeple like far-off church melodies.   His emotions
began to soften.   He looked about around the horizon,
and over the far-extending earth, and he thought of the
friends of his youth, who, now happier and better than
he, were teachers of the earth, fathers of happy children
and blessed men, and  he  said, Oh, I might  also, like
you, slumber with dry  eyes through this first  night if I
had willed it; alas!  I might have been happy, my dear
parents, if I had but obeyed your exhortations.
   "In the feverish  remembrance of this time  of his
youth, it appeared  to  him as if the skull  in  the house
of the dead  raised itself up.   At length it became a
living  youth,  by that  superstition which, in the New
Year's night, sees spirits of futurity.
   "He could look upon it no longer, he covered his
eyes,  a thousand hot  tears  dropped from his cheeks,
vanishing in the  snow.  He sighed disconsolately, in
accents scarcely audible,   'Come  back,  youth,  oh,
come back !'   And it did come back; for thus horribly
he had only dreamt.  His  errors alone had been  no
dream.   But he thanked God that he, yet young, was
able to turn  round  in the dirty walks of vice, and to
return to the sunny path which leads into the land of
the harvests."
   The implication of punishment for life-laws broken, 
SPENDING.
23
to be meted out in some  future sphere, may be left for
the  pulpit.  The  future which our suggestions consider,
is to-day, to-morrow, every day.  Eternity, for the man
who would live right, has  no beginning, no ending,—
to-day is of eternity.  Assuredly is this true of all ques-
tions which involve good or evil.   Who that has not
bought a dollar's worth of heaven, as he has dropped
his  money upon the counter of a  widow's wants,  or
who that has not received his complement of wretch-
edness from the  dollars drawn to his own till, leaving
empty the purse of an orphan ?
  " Once in my youth," says Montaigne, "I bent me
down over the delicate  freshness  and fragrance  of a
sweet mignonette plant; it was beautiful, and the breath
of God came from its throat.  This was in the morning.
In the afternoon  I had sinned to the deserving of hang-
ing ; and  when, in the  evening,  I came back to get
consolation from my flower, alas! its fragrance was all
gone and its freshness had turned into dry leaves."
  A man who  buys  of evil, is no less a fool—ay,  even
is he a greater—than he who casts  his notes upon the
waters, watching  them  as they float away.  The  last
loses alone of  good; the first loses not only his good,
but replaces the good with evil,—

       "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

  "The mewling, puking age  of  infancy" we know.
The scene  "that ends the strange,  eventful  history,—
the  second childishness," we daily see.  So, also, do we
see  the actor, ere he speaks, walk from the obscurity of
parts beyond  the wings;  but before he passes out the
other side  he has played a part, and that which he has 
24
ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
 said or done is to leave its impress, stronger or lighter,
 greater or  lesser, forever,—as a word, however  lightly
 whispered, agitates the surrounding atmosphere and has
 the movement limited  by space alone.
                    " Use, use is life,"

 and life is immortal.
    When one walks upon a street,  he finds himself in-
 stinctively measuring the character and nature of the
 people he meets.  This is truly an  instinct, and comes
 from its relation to that  law of nature which is known
 as  impressibility; that is, that  molecular life  is influ-
- enced or modified by that which acts upon it.   So that,
 as a man can make no movement, however slight, which
 alters not to an extent his muscular  relations, so is no
 thought indulged, or act  committed, which leaves not,
 in its own way, a lasting impression.   So true indeed is
 this, physiologically,  that it interprets to him who
 may read it, the character and nature of that book of
 life wherein is recorded  all  the actions of our being.
 Let us make an illustration:   "That is a bad man,"
 say you, as one crosses your  way;  or, " In that face is
 the countenance of virtue."   Why do  you so judge?
 It is not probable that you may have any special reason
 to give, but you do not hesitate to affirm that  you are
 seldom mistaken in these judgments.   Well, ask  now
 your friend, the closer observing physiognomist, about
 the two passers, or ask your neighbor, the phrenologist,
 as  he calls himself.   Little by little will these, with
 their cultivated powers, spell out the impressions which,
 like letters  strung together, make the books of  the two
 lives.  Page by page  will they  read, missing nothing, 
SPENDING.
25
and at length shall you know,  from the beginnii.g to
the ending, all of the lines that have been written.  It
is no  truer that  muscles, bones, and ligaments a/e in-
fluenced to their strength or weakness by that which is
put into the  blood for their nutrition, than is it,  that
the soul of a man shows the pabulum upon which it
feeds.  The story of a life, body and soul, is the story
of an animal fed upon pigment.   For experiment's sake
take a young pig,  fresh from its mother, and oi rapid
growth, feed it  alternate days  with food conuining
madder and  food without the coloring mattei ; in a
month the animal  may be killed, when dissection will
reveal in its bones  layers of red and layers of white, as
regular in the rotation, as was the feeding.
  Or, to  take another example, also  a very familiar
one :  prick into the skin in earliest boyhood India-ink.
It remains, some of it, even although happily modified,
when old age has come to the man.  Yet, in the years
which have intervened, the epithelial tissue "in which it
lies has been in constant  alteration.   True,  the  ink
must  disappear,  all of it,  some time,—not from  life
however, not from  nature.  So long as matter shall last
will it exist.  I only want to impress that  in your re-
lation with it you modified  it and it modified you.
  If the shop in which one buys, contains bonds which
pay a continuously increasing interest, shall a purchasei
not better take of these, than of stocks which are worth-
less, or of chattels, which may be absolutely hurtful ?
  A good action radiates good, and an  evil deed circu-
lates evil; shall  one, then,  not rather do that which is
good ?
  A man  is a free  agent to  himself.  Shall he, then, 
 26        ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

 as his turn comes, play the seven ages, taking no lesson
 from  the past?   Will he say, A bearded pard is  the
 fourth part, and  I  must  play the pard ?  Now war is
 coming to be recognized as the disgrace  and offense of
 high civilization, and woe may it be to  him by whom
 the offense cometh !   Shall he not then rather beat his
 sword into the pruning-hook, and  in the higher and
 nobler pursuits of peace,  give to himself, and  insure to
 others, that  quiet and calm which  is the joy and  the
 comfort  of living ?  Sophistry may only satisfy the sol-
 dier of defense—never him, of offense.
  If use is life, to do good and to get good is the  life
 of use.   Not  is life to be viewed as seven seasons,  but
 as three: spring, the season of preparation;  summer,
 the season of  development; fall, the season  of giving
 forth.   To yield, is the  highest development of  man-
 life, as it is of tree-life;  and as a tree is known by its
 fruit, so  becomes a man known.  The  tree that pro-
 duces the best fruit is most valued, best attended.   So
 man, producing good fruit, is cultivated, and men bring
 to his support all that best ministers  to him;  and if he
 grows greater and better  than  all other trees, so it is to
 his  honor and glory to  stand out a landmark to  the
 world.
  But a tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn
 down, and is cast into the fire.  The moral axe which
strikes down  a bad  man  is not of less temper of edge
 than is  that which  cleaves through a  bad  tree.   It
differs, however, from it in being a blade which rises out
 of a man's own self, and its strikings are of each action;
so that  as a man of  ill  grace strikes, happily his  axe
strikes also,  and  thus, with each blow he makes  his 
SPENDING.
27
ability to strike hard is diminished.   The world, seeing
not the axe which cuts  him, looks  at  him as a man
losing  character,  and says  of  him, "He will soon
be powerless for  evil, for all his  reputation  will be
gone." 
PRINCIPLES.
 "AN ordinary man," says Godwin,  in his "Study
  J\  of the  Classics," "sees an object just as it is
presented to  him, and sees no more.   But a man of
genius takes  it  to  pieces, inquires into  its causes and
effects,  remarks its internal  structure,  and considers
what would have been the result  if its members had
been  arranged  and  combined differently, or had been
subjected to other influences.  The man of gertius gains
a whole magazine of thought, while the ordinary man
has received only one idea; and his powers  are multi-
plied  in proportion to the number of ideas upon which
they are to be so employed."
  In  the museum of the University  of Pennsylvania
hangs the  portrait of an eminent man,  in which he is
represented as  leaning  against a  massive block of
granite; across the  face of  this block, three times
repeated, is the meaning word, Principles, Principles,
Principles.
  As it comes in the way of a man to grow in the com-
prehension of the things of life, he will find that more
and more is it impressed on him, that nothing, but that
which ignorance makes, is complex; that anything and
everything, understood,  astonishes much more in  its
simplicity than it did in the dim light of its obscurity.
  The  law of  the needle, said Howe,  is, I see, that
 the eye should be  in the point, and not in the head,
       (28) 
PRINCIPLES.
29
and so, the moment the eye was changed, the  needle
made twenty stitches where before it had only been able
to make one; and  mankind wondered, and each day
wonders not less, that the stupidity of the world, never,
until the nineteenth century of the  Christian era, saw
the principle of managing a needle.
  Principles are,  however, to be grasped alone from
that  preliminary comprehension of  things which con-
siders details;  a man crawls with his finite mental feet
from the spring's mouth to the spring's source; from
the phenomena to the  force from  which  phenomena
come.   It is thus, or otherwise, that there is  a  genius
not of growth, but of birth; or perhaps it very well
may  be that there are even two such sources of true
knowledge, that is, the inductive, and the inspirational.
  To induce, a man  must possess that  through  which
induction comes;  this possession is knowledge :  recall
the aphorism of all civilization, "Knowledge is power."
  Let us for a moment think of the science of language.
What must have been the crude condition of that  which
to-day, from twenty-six irregular marks, composes many
thousands of words, which words, in the various trans-
positions which we can  make of them,  express all the
science, the  art, the  poetry, and the literature  of the
world !  Or think again of all the music of the world,
of the grave,  godly  strains of  Beethoven, or of the
pipings, which dance of themselves, of Offenbach,—
the changes of seven notes,—simply, seven notes.   Or
still again, think of the great mechanical works accom-
plished by man.  The stones of the Pyramids raised;
seas  turned  from their channels;  mountains razed;
steam  harnessed  to wheels, and working as  docile 
 30       ODD  HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

 as  the  veriest  galley-slave,— all,  all done with  five
 simple instruments.  Or still again, count the stars of
 the sky and number the grains  of sand  upon the sea-
 shore,—it is easy to find the number. You need but nine
 figures and a cipher.  Yes, wonderful, and  of witchery,
 as it seemed to the unlettered dweller of the  forest, it
 is even, as remarked by Cardell, " That the instrument
 of all intellectual improvement, of social enjoyment,
 of commercial transactions ; the great mental attendant
 from which  the dearest  ties of domestic life  derive
 their highest gratification;  the  handmaid of science
 in all its walks ; the medium  of instruction,  civil, moral,
 religious ;  the basis of all the relations of peace and
 war; of public security and  personal right; of jurispru-
 dence, and the decisions of life  and death; the whole
 composition of individual elevation and national glory
 so inwrought with every ligament of social existence,—
 all  this amazing machinery depends  on the combina-
 tions of twenty-six little marks of different forms made
 on paper, and called letters."
  But  how, and whence came  letters?  Letters came
as all things come, that is, being a creation of neces-
sity.  Let me offer an  illustration.
  Some few years back there lived,  in the city of Phil-
adelphia, a strange man, who wandered about the streets
hatless,  and whom the  people called Munday or  Mon-
day, otherwise the " Hatless Philosopher."  One after-
noon, followed by a troop of boys, his usual attendants,
I saw this man stop, in an apparently reflective mood,
before a store sign upon which was inscribed the name
 "Caveson."   Turning, after a  moment,  to his fol-
lowers, he  said,  " Boys, can  any of you tell  me how 
PRINCIPLES.
31
this man came to be called Caveson ?  It is just from
the matter  of a principle.  The father of this person
lived, in some long-ago-forgotten  time,  in  a cave.
What so natural as to distinguish him from his neigh-
bor who  lived in  the wood, by designating him from
his residence?  Thus he became  'Cave,'  the man
who lived in the cave.   In the course of time,  this
man in  the shop here  was born;  he had  to  have a
name, so it  came, by the  same principle, that people
knew him as  Cave's son.  The apostrophe, as  >ou
must see, soon made itself felt as awkward and  un-
necessary;  it was dropped,  and from  that  hour the
man was Caveson." Just here  an inductive urchin,
of Jewish type, cried out, "But how about Caveson's
son,—what did they call him ?"  " Go to your school,
instead of lounging about the streets," answered the
Philosopher, " and you will discover that by this time
your Hebrew fathers had learned grammar, and having
' case,' they never  could, thereafter,  have had  any
trouble about such matters."
   Just as Cave's son became  Caveson, so letters came,
must have come.   With  man's advancement, require-
ments  grew, or  rather,   made  themselves felt;  in-
genuity developed with requirements.
   Let us for a moment pursue this subject.  It very
well serves as a type of  all inductive knowledge;  in it
may be seen all of advancing life.
   The hieroglyphics of Egypt, which were the letters
of the Egyptian,  numbered  two hundred  and  three.
Perhaps, better than call them letters, we should desig-
nate them as signs.  They were the crude creations of
the  predecessors  of Phoenicia's  Cadmus;  they were 
32
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
better  than- no  signs,  but,  as  higher  requirements
proved, they had not in them the capability of passing
beyond symbols.   Hence we wonder not now that the
Egyptian transmitted to his succeeding ages no  poetry
or literature, it was simply that he had  no alphabet in
which  to write such things;  his signs  were paintings,
and who has  ever  painted the words that burn ?   He
could tell, and  has told, of his wars, and  of his arts,
of sciences, policy, and laws, but in higher composi-
tion he was dumb.
  The fault of the letter, or sign, or symbol of Egypt,
call it what you please, was the lack of a mathematical
precision.  To write much, was to increase  the number
of the hieroglyphics; to increase the  number,  was to
confound the meanings.  Now, it is with letters as with
machinery: to do  much work with them, the elements
of their  construction must be simple, easy of  under-
standing, and effectual in application.  The letters of
Cadmus, if indeed it were he who invented the  letters
we now use, are  reducible to  a mathematical certainty
in the matter of  unlimited application; simple lines
and  marks that they  are, made, all  of them, in a
moment, they will write  as  readily the history  and
poetry of a world  as the  simple  explanation of their
own  invention.    And  thus  we  are  led to  see  that
this wonderful thing called language, which even the
library of an Alexandria, with its half-million volumes,
did not  exhaust,  lies,  all of it, in twenty-six little
marks.   Ah !  what shall man not know, when he be-
comes  able to see  in all things, as did  Cadmus, of the
secrets of language ?  The houses of the  mysteries are
as soap-bulbles, when we may reach to pierce them. 
PRINCIPLES.
33
  To be able to do, is but to know; to know, is, by
contemplation and investigation, to possess one's self
of that knowledge which, as Bacon  calls it, is the
"force, or  power, of life."  But, "Even as  a hawke
fleeth not hie with one wing, even so a man  reacheth
not to excellency with one idea"—tongue, is the word
of the  philosophic Askam, from whom I make the
quotation.
  This I want to say, that no thing is  known, solidly,
outside  of  the reasons concerned in the construction
of that  thing.  What an unintelligible mass of confu-
sion must ever remain pathological matters to  him who
possesses not the weights of the physiological balance !
With what may he  measure  derangements?   With
what illumine the obscurities?  And  then again,  in
turn, who can learn anything of physiology without a
foundation for judgment  fixed in the laws of anatomi-
cal construction? And  what man,  still  again, may
read the general law  of form, who, with microscope,
grasps not first the secrets of histology ?  How incom-
prehensible, to the illiterate mind, must it be, when,
from a  marl-pit, the palaeontologist picks up  the half-
decayed tooth, and from its anatomy reads the history
of a race dead  a thousand  years !  Nay; even  more
than this ; when, from that single symbol, he re-creates,
with wood  and plaster, the  exact form  of the entire
animal, never perhaps, seen by human eyes.   Yet, to
the scholar, the work  has  been very easy; to  do  it,
he needed  alone to know the principle of type con-
formity.
   Life is conformity to law.   This I  believe to be the
highest text in medicine.   The phenomena of the earth
                         3 
34        ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

and of the heavens are simply expressions, true to their
laws as are the revolutions of the wheel.   Nothing in
all the world's creation is complex. What should be to
man the obscurities of .medical  diagnosis, when  it is
permitted him to look to  the very limits  of sidereal
space?  When a physician sees not fully and distinctly
the disease of his patient, he is ignorant, must be igno-
rant,  because he fails to read causes that exist, and
which causes, in the very law of nature, are readable.
Not, however, as all must understand, may such igno-
rance reflect  specially on any individual practitioner;
all his fellows may be equally unable to the translation.
But this reflection it does make:  every phenomenon
has its cause,  every cause is capable of analysis.   Learn-
ing is not complete in a man until  he has the key that
opens every secret.  Does this expression seem preten-
tious ?  Not  so.  Adam and Eve got learning enough
to discover that they were  naked.  The  nineteenth
century clutches by the very blade the flaming sword
that drove them from Paradise, and turns it  into a mes-
sage-bearer to run up and down the earth.  Or, if the
sword rebels and would strike, man fends the blow with
his lightning-rod.
   "It moves," said Galileo;  with  his newly-invented
telescope he had caught the secrets of the heavens, and
had  overturned the  unintelligible unrealities  of  the
Ptolemaic theory.   It is very simple to  us now that we
know it.  The law of the balloon  is now no  mystery
even to a child; but Bartholomeu Gusmao  had to en-
dure the tortures of Dominic's Inquisition  because his
invention was deemed by his  ignorant  Jesuit brothers
to be of Satan rather than of science. 
PRINCIPLES.
35
  The fault of the age is, that man knows entirely too
little, or entirely too much,—too much for the Ptole-
maic  faith of the monkish  fathers, too little for the
materialistic* flight which, it  may be, is to unite him on
a higher plane with the religion which, as a scientist,
he is now accused of wandering from.   God has multi-
tudinous attributes.   The sum of his total, or the secrets
of his analysis, man is never perhaps to read.   But this
is the only knowledge he  may not attain to.   To him,
I am sure, are all other mysteries given,—he may not, by
searching, find out God, yet he may learn of Him. But
milk  is for babes,-and strong  meat is for men.  Let
babes take that  which best suits  them, but when men
revile the meat which may alone appease  the appetite
of a Herbert Spencer, aTyndall, a Darwin, an Emerson,
or any other thinker, let them remember the contempt
which all the casuistry of  Tiraboschi succeeded not in
turning from  the milk-drinkers of the  Inquisition, the
persecutors of Galileo and Gusmao.
  The study of the laws of life is materialism, but mate-
rialism is not infidelity.  It is time, if, indeed, the time
has  not already come, when intelligence shall have out-
grown this, its greatest heresy to itself.   " Know thy-
self," is the  advice  of  God, and no  man knows  of
himself without knowing just  that much more of God.
  The study  of self, of life, is materialism.   "My  in-
vention," said  Gusmao,  "is  not of Satan, is  not in
opposition  to any law or belief of the  church, the
navigation  of the air is the simple understanding of a
  * Materialism is not accepted in these papers as denying spiritual
relations. 
36        ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

natural  law."   Not so, however,  thought his  fellow-
Jesuits,  and so Gusmao was  thrown into the deepest
dungeon of the Inquisition for  being heretical  and in
league with evil spirits.  Can  this Florentine professor,
in his Copernican heresy, know more than Pope, coun-
cils, and fathers? asks the antagonist  essayist of the
man who had discovered more of God than had all the
ignorance  of  his times.   "It  does  move," answered
Galileo ; and  the church and the people of to-day re- ■
peat,  "It does move."  "The Inquisition itself will
float in my balloon," cried Gusmao from his deep cell,
and Catholic France has floated.   Materialism,—why,
materialism is  (to the understanding of God) what the
understanding of anatomy is  to the comprehension of
physiology, or what physiology is to the knowledge of
pathology.  Materialism never has,  never will, never
can be in  opposition to religion.  To theology, it has
been  and  may still be; but  a great mistake is made
when  theology and religion are used as synonymous.
  I would, just here, be well understood and not mis-
quoted.   My own soul bows  in reverence, beyond any
words I might speak, before  my God, the Creator of
the world.  But the subject of religion  appeals to me
with  a  grandeur  and a greatness, and withal, with  a
simplicity which raises it so high, that the dross which
man throws over it, somehow or other, fails to obscure
it to me.   Where duty is so plain, the technicalities of
science  do not seem to me necessary to its elucidation.
If (between materialism and  theology) there is confu-
sion and conflict, it is only the  difference of two things
which, from opposite aspects, gravitate towards a com-
mon center.   When the two classes map their circle, 
PRINCIPLES.
37
 each will, from necessity, clasp hands at this center;
 this cannot be otherwise, else is truth not truth, or else
 are men dishonest to that which is the very pith of life,
 and are fools in their very constitutions.
   The difference between the scientist and theologians
 is the difference of Philip's son  and the Babylonian
 priests.  When Alexander overran Babylon, he brought
 from every country which he had conquered one of its
 priesthood.   Assembling them  all together  he asked,
 "Do you venerate a highest invisible  being?"   All
 bowed themselves and answered, " We do."
   " With what title name you him?" asked the king.
 Thereupon answered the priest from India, " We name
 it Brahma;  that means  the  great."   The priest from
 Persia, "We name it Ormus;  that means the original
 light."  The priest from Judea, " Jehovah Adonai;  the
 Lord who was, is, and will be."   And thus every priest
 had an own word wherewith  he  denominated the Most
 High.  Then in his  heart angered the king.   "You
 have  only one ruler  and one  king," said he, "so
 shall  you henceforth  have only one god; Zeus is  his
 name."
  When  the king had spoken there was much sorrow,
 for the priests said to  themselves,  " How can we love
a new god ?''
  At  length a-Brahmin, a gray-haired sage, begged per-
mission of the king to speak to the assembly.  Turning
himself to the  priests he thus addressed them: "The
heavenly constellation of the day, the well of the earthly
light, shines  it in  the  country of each of you?"   All
bowed themselves together  and  answered, "Yes."
Then the Brahmin asked them one after another,  "How 
 38       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

 name  you the  same?"   Each one  answered,  but each
 had a different name.   Then turned  the  Brahmin to
 the king and asked, "Shall they not name henceforth
 the constellation of the day with the same word ?"   At
 these words the king became full of shame, and said,
 " Let them each use his own word ; I  see well that the
 image and sign is not the essence."  (Krummacher.)
   We come  back.   A principle is like the  delicate
 lever, which  a slight hand  touches, and a huge steam-
 ship is moved.   But the lever mover must understand
 the relations of the lever.  This is knowledge in detail;
 a wise student  seeks always from the details,  the prin-
 ciple, thus he  gets hold of  the  lever.  "Give me a
 fulcrum," cried Archimedes, "and I will move  the
 world."
   Let us work  out together a thought, a study we may
 call  it.  Let us see how a circle,  little or great, has
 always a center.  This shall be the  thought.
   God  is omnipresent.  Yet when  a  man supplicates
 God there is a light of  his  nature which always places
 before him a  father with an individuality, whom he ad-
 dresses.   Can anything have individuality and yet be
 omnipresent?  Is  this the  same as  asking "If a thing
 can be in two different places at the same time?"  We
 will consider the answer materialistically.
   I speak before you a word, Water.  Already has the
 mind in its presence that  which is known as this sub-
stance.   Every one of us has the same sense of recog-
nition.   No two differ in  what is  seen.   This, then,
which we see, which we  recognize,  is a thing with an
individuality.   So much is certain.  Water has indi-
viduality. 
PRINCIPLES.
39
  We pass to a second  proposition.  Water is omni-
present.
  Take a vessel and  fill it with ice, set it  out on the
hottest, driest day of summer; soon its whole surface
is  covered with beads of water;  the  cold vessel has
simply condensed surrounding moisture.   Or get up
early  some  summer morning,  and see the dew with
which the earth washes her face;  the  spigot of radia-
tion is not less simple than is that which man turns in
his bath.  The air, then,  is full of water, and the finger
may make no motion in space that does not displace
this substance.  Burn a piece of wood, dry, if you
please, with the lapse of ages; analyze the smoke which
ascends  in  the combustion, and  in every pore of  the
wood you will see that there must  have been moisture.
Take  the carpet upon your floor;  if you find not water
in its  fibres it is rotten, and you will need  to throw it
away.   Take a bone, the identical one, if you might
find it, which gave origin to the expression, " Dry as a
bone," subject it to the action of a  fire which shall burn
out even  but part of the animal moisture  it contains,
and you will  have no longer a bone, but dust.  Take
the paper upon which you write;  take your books; in
all, will be found water.   Take man in his  lordliness.
Water is he, all of him, but an almost  inappreciable
moiety.
  Water is everywhere at the same time.
  Water is, then, omnipresent.*
  If thus, materialistically, we demonstrate  the omni-
presence of a created thing, is it not a negative proof

 * Criticism may be anticipated by admitting that water is not recog-
nizable  by analysis in even all the things which have been mentioned; 
40        ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

quite as strong as a positive, that the Creator is more
subtle than that which he creates ?  We assume, then,
logically, the proving without a doubt  that could arise
on the question.  Let  us also  repeat the other aspect,
for  it is a comfortable expression to  mankind,  God,
with his omnipresence, is Individual.
  We pause  here to consider the knowledge which en-
ables us to know, inductively, what we have just averred.
  If we say water is in everything, and as  we  know
everything passes away, either it must be that water is
a continuous creation, «or otherwise it must be directly
correlative.
  Let us look.
  Here is a spring,  away, if we please, upon a mount-
ain-side.   We stand for awhile and watch the water as
it comes bubbling through the  sands  in the bottom.
We will dig, we say, for we wish to find the  source of
the  bubbling; so,  as we work, we  come  soon to  a
crevice; here is the water; foot  by foot we follow this
crevice; it leads us  to the  surface.   A spring,  then, is
simply water coming up through  the earth, which water
had  soaked in from its surface.   This  our digging has
proved to us.
  We will follow the  water from the spring;  it  is  a
mountain rivulet: the grass, and ferns, and birds drink
of it.   We follow it to the meadow: it has grown  into
it is not found in oxide of iron, in crystals, etc.  It may be denied
that as water it exists in the brain; but not to digress to a discussion
which passes beyond the demonstrations of analytical chemistry, water
is a substance so widely diffused that one may scarcely conceive where
it may not be, and, as such a substance, it answers best the purpose
of our illustration. 
PRINCIPLES.
41
the creek ;  it becomes of the river; of the bay ; of the
sea.   Now  we seat ourselves upon  the  shore.   What
are the great rays extending away off into the sky ?—
water-rays, the  shore-man calls them.   Let us follow.
Behold !  it is the water of the mountain spring.   We
go not far  before we see the vapors condensed into a
cloud, and the cloud is carried by the  swaying winds
over  the mountain; here it  meets with some  colder
strata, and down comes the water in the form of rain.
We run to lopk at it, but even so soon has it sunk away
into the crevice.   Then we  say  to  ourselves we have
seen a circle.
   Have we worked out our  thought ?  And may not
even  this  single illustration  suggest that  profoundest
things are capable of ample and simple explanation ?
—that even of  God  may we learn  something  by the
seeking.
   I object  to the common  criticism on the word ma-
terialism, because it seems to me that  they who  criti-
cise fail to see that its definition is of a necessity changed
by the circumstances of the times.   Matter and spirit
correlate, and in their transmigration fulfill all laws and
serve all purposes;  but materialism treats alone  of law,
not of the maker of the law.  Materialism (in the ana-
lytical nature) precedes faith, as symbols and  signs
precede speech.   Materialism is the one  side of a circle
that  leads to God,—the maker of Law, just  as Bible-
faith  is the other side.   The first teaches a man the
attributes of his God by carrying him over God's foot-
steps ; the second is the same knowledge, received by
what we have suggested  as inspirational.
   From a common source has come all things.   One 
42
ODD  HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
circlet is associated with another, as are the circlets en-
larging from the stone which agitates the water.  A
man getting his  teaching from  inspiration is  as one
raised  above the water  and seeing the circlets  as they
enlarge from a center.  The materialist seeks the cen-
ter, being led from  the circumference.  Let not central-
ist and materialist rebuke  each other, but rather recog-
nize that to each pertains the same center and the same
circle.
  "Children only, and  not men,"  says  the  sacred
book of the  Hindoo, "write and  speak of the specu-
lative and practical faculties as two;  they are but one,
for  both obtain the self-same end, and the place which
is gained by the followers of the one is gained  by the
followers of the other." 
LAW.
    LAW it  is which governs,  or should govern, all
      things.  Absence  of  law,  or absence of  con-
formity to law, gives much more of dis-ease, than ease.
Let no man complain in his short-sightedness that he is
under the dominion of law, even although its clutch
may be about his throat, or its incubus upon his estate :
let him rather look farther.
  Here before us stands, if  we may make an example,
a poor little girl; she shivers  in the  thinness of her
blood; she is putrescent  from its pollution.   She suf-
fers from the infringement  of law; yet in her person
has she not broken the law wherefrom she suffers.   She
is laboring,  we say,  under a transmitted disease; the
sin  of the father is visited  on the child, and to the
fourth generation is this perhaps to continue.
  In reflecting on a case of this kind, we are led, natu-
rally, to  consider  the subject of  the waste and  repair
constantly at variance in the human  economy,—the
laws of nutrition, if  you please; and in such reflection
we  find forced upon us the conviction of the agreement
with modern science;  of the inferences or prophecies,
the deductions or inspired  sayings, name them  what
you will, of those whom we infer to have  known no-
thing logically of what they affirmed.   To say, in an
isolated or abstract manner,  that one shall suffer for the
sins of another, seems, and  indeed is, repugnant to all
      1                                   (43) 
ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
sense of equity; but when wider  viewed, when one
rises above  the  mists which environ  him in  his  in-
dividuality,  when he comes to a  recognition of  the
principles which govern, if,  then, he does  not cease to
think of equity,  he finds himself at least  lost in won-
derment of a law through whose provision  he has been
so well and so fully cared for.
  Life and fate may be likened  to the revolving wheels
of a  great chariot, yet  luckily for us,  guided in an
unerring, undeviating course, as when a Phoebus holds
the reins, not  roving  and erratically moving as with a
Phaeton, to set a world  ablaze.
  The type of life is a unity.   Vary as it must, change
as it will, it passes onward step  by step, stage by stage,
in an  eternal progress—or  shall we better say, in an
eternal  circle?—until the single cell becomes a man,
and until—who may say otherwise?—the man grows unto
his God, to become again a part of that from whence
he came,—as God is life. As a sunray set  free from its
center,  passes through immensity, doing in its passage,
who shall say what good ? becomes imprisoned in a clod
of coal, passes again after generations of generations to
its  chemical elimination, which we call fire, is  again
freed, again on  its round, and finally,  after a  varied
service, finds itself whence it came.
   Or, as water has a distinct individuality, let it be for
us in what form  it may, one it is,  like unto God :  the
same,  everlasting and  eternal;  it  changes form  but
alters not; it passes along in its cycle, now the rolling
waves of an ocean, now the solid  and ponderous  ice-
berg, anon  as the  insensible   perspiration; with  the
same sparkle  it refreshes the  lips  of a dying infant 
LAW.
45
 and lashes to his destruction the storm-tossed mariner;
 it obeys the laws of its existence, and in so obeying can
 heed as little the calls of him who would woo  its rain-
 drops to his parched  fields as him who prays the stay
 of a deluge.
   What is this law of force which in the abstract seems
 so merciless?   It  is the law of  the  sunshine, which
 gives life alike  to the fields of the  just and the unjust;
 the law of the water, which, while it  floats  to the de-
 struction of some peaceful town the iron-clad  monster
 of war, carries, as well,  the love-freighted  argosy to
 the relief of a Leyden.   It  is the law of nature, firm,
 unchanging, immutable as creation itself, for it is crea-
 tion.
   Let us look still farther.
   Life is a formative process;  a process of develop-
 ment, growth, maintenance.  The principle is  alike in all
 beings.   Indeed, I take it that it is alike in everything,
 in a stone as in a man, and I am compelled to  see that
 it is perfect.   Will you answer that the individual runs
 out and  dies?   It may simply be told  you  to look
 wider; life dies not.  What man  calls death  is only
 change of form; is only the correlation of one  thing
 into another thing.  Nothing is lost.  No more than is
 lost the sunray which  changed and correlated from  a
 bright essence into the black, silent coal crystal, or the
 water, which perhaps that very sunray may have evap-
 orated and carried away from sight.
  Some time during the earlier weeks of the last sum-
mer there came to my office a beautiful woman, with
bitter complaints of an ugly hair-mole  that  had fixed
itself  upon her cheek.  I cut this  (to her, disgusting 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
thing) from its location, and,  macerating  it into a
liquid manure, little by little  made a  lily, which was
growing  in my garden, appropriate the tumor;  in a
month, a short month,  nature had converted the de-
formity  into a fragrant nosegay, and  that which was
so offensive became a source of delight.  It was simply
a matter of correlation.
   The full knowledge and the observance of law would
necessarily give man the all-sufficient  command of his
molecules, would yield  him all  protection, would  in-
sure him all comfort.
   Let law be obeyed, and law is found  man's minister;
let law  be disobeyed,  and law becomes man's execu-
tioner.
   Born and reared, the physical  life of man is a simple
matter of chemico-vital assimilation,—nothing else; by
processes natural,  the deficient  is renewed, the  lost is
replaced.   So long as the phenomena of waste and re-
pair are  in  harmony;  so long,  in other words, as the
builder follows the wake of the scavenger, so long man
exists in  integrity and  repair,—just, indeed,  as houses
exist.  Derange nutrition, and  at once degeneration,
or rather, let  us say, alteration, commences.  Assim-
ilation, it is true, may go on, but it is  as the new wine
put into the old bottle;  it is the strong, not  taking the
place of, but  attached  to, the weak:  all will fall to-
gether.   Derangement of nutrition is  derangement of
law.  Alas ! that we are yet so ignorant that there are
many things  about our  house,  which,  seeing  them
weaken, we  know not  how to strengthen.  About the
brick and the  mortar, the frame and the rafters, we are
not  unlearned ; but  within   are  many complexities, 
LAW.
47
many chinks and crannies, full in themselves of second-
ary chinks' and crannies, and  these so small, so deep,
so recessed, that it happens every day that the destroyer
settles himself  in  some place so obscure, that while
he kills, he laughs at defiance.   You  or  I meet with
an accident in  our watch, break  a  crystal, or a hand,
or  the  case  becomes damaged, but  straightway we
find ourselves wise enough  to appreciate  the harm,
and  the ill is soon  repaired.   Perhaps,  however, the
watch has  fallen,  and we take it up, yet see nothing
amiss, but from  that hour, although it goes, it  goes
wrong.  We are led to know that something is required ;
we consult, then, the watchmaker.  He may or may not
see;  this would be according to his light.  What the
man with a magnifying lens would observe would  not
be discovered by one with the unassisted  eye.   What
sufficient knowledge  would quickly correct, would re-
main unhelped  by the inexperienced.  If we were all
that  watchmakers like ourselves should be, and—may I
not say ?—judging what we may come to learn, from what
we have worked out—should be—can be;  a man could
be made to keep time until he died from  old age or
annihilating accident. This  I firmly and fully believe.
  Yet, if we cannot always save, we never lose.   Happy
world, and  happy "life"  of  the world, that the unity
cannot be destroyed,—that  "form,"  mocking  man's
failures, will, let alone, or, indeed, however maltreated,
take care  of, and  restore, itself!   Offenses, whatever
their character or nature, wear themselves out, or are
overcome.   In the physical world we have all the proof
we need of such a  law; it may, for all  that is known,
apply as well to the spiritual.  Will not this little girl 
48       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
we  example,  in  the  fourth generation be  purified of
this specific offense? or if it happen that the poison
which courses through her blood is as the blood itself,
and may not be overcome, will  she  not, from neces-
sity, run with it, as did  the swine  into the  sea, and
will not thus the parasite  be destroyed ?  We all have
seen, doubtless,  some  great oak, around which, year
after year, the tightening  garniture of an ivy-vine has
fixed itself,  and we have watched  the  tree  until we
have seen it die ; but a day came when it fell, and with
its fall we saw slacken and die the grasp of the para-
site.  What then?   From the thing passed away, be it
tree or man,  mineral or metal,—from the element  into
which  the  thing has passed, comes forth  new forms.
What matters what the likeness ?  Does not the water
fulfill alike its mission, whether we have it as the clouds,
which modify the sun's heat; as ice, which cools the
fevered patient; or as a dancing rivulet, which, as it
leaps and plashes down the mountain-side, delights the
senses?   What should it  matter to  a nugget of gold
taken from  the  hillside whether it  adorns the  finger
of beauty, or passes to the  avaricious palm of a grasping
creditor?   Should a piece of iron think itself ill used
because the workman  moulded it into a rivet  rather
than incorporated it into the  fly-wheel of a steam-
engine ?  I put it to  you, if a rivet that holds well does
not its proportion of good with the fly-wheels?  All
pieces of  iron  cannot be fly-wheels, and  it certainly
would be sad enough for our comfort if all the ore was
made into rivets
  Unity and  individuality are not, however, synonyms.
Man, not  as  a combination of elementary substances, 
LAW.
49
but as man, as the father, the husband, the  celebrity,
must have, and craves, immortality.  Yet, who thinks
or cares for such  individuality when  he reads the his-
tory of the genus?  Man was smothered and buried at
Pompeii;  but who knows, or even cares to know, his
name?  What, in the future,  are  the  features  of the
man who  blessed  the world with the sewing-machine ?
or what of him who put into  harness  the lightnings ?
Tell me who  lifted the stones of the  Pyramids, or who
carved the mercy-expressive eyes of the Sphinx ?  Man.
But what was his  name ?
   About the dispensations, as they are called, the mys-
teries, who may know ?  That it is necessary, or even
useful, that we should bother ourselves about them may
be doubted.    The  man who lives  well to-day  must
be fitting  himself for a better living to-morrow.  To
me it seems that man attains his highest elevation, cer-
tainly in his relations to his fellows and to himself, and
it  may be believed also to his God, when he works just
as all  the rest  of nature works; that is, fixes himself
and holds on, doing his best.   We know what we are;
but who knows what he will be ?   Shall a violet grum-
ble that it has not the strength of a pine? or the tree
complain  that it  lacks  the odor of the flower?  We
will  not, as Physicists at least, go  outside that we can
attain to.  If it please God that my direct Ego is to be
forever and eternally retained without alteration, why,
as I feel now and am informed, I think I should be
very grateful.   The  other day I was sitting at table
with a reflective friend, when the subject of two roasted
ducks, then before us, came up. We were sympathizing
for the dead birds, until  suddenly it struck us that from
                        4 
ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
fowls they were to be  correlated into human bipeds,
into the higher life of humanity;  and in this conviction
we went at the ducks with a relish,—a relish tinctured
alone with the regret that they could not know what a
service we were doing them.
  Man  may not discuss the attributes of the soul:  he
may only query.  Yet seeing,  as he  must, so much  of
good, recognizing that all of which  he fully knows is
good, why,  before any change, should he falter?  Is
the soul of a man, as it represents and is the Ego, his
nearest  relation to the perfect ?   We know  not other-
wise, and we may not,  perhaps, by searching, find out;
but this we  may know, and do,—we may rest in law,
which has never yet been discovered to be unjust, par-
tial, or weak. 
CORRELATION.
     THE doctrine of the " Correlation and Conserva-
      tion of Force," which men strangely speak of
as a something new, and which, unfortunately for an
advancing acquaintance of the masses with their Crea-
tor, through his wonderful works, many unreflecting or
illiterate of our clergy continue to denounce as a de-
lusive doctrine, is, and  has  been, necessarily, the  law
of life and progression from the beginning.
  I  say illiterate clergy.  This term, to  the  popular
ear,  sounds  harsh.   It sounds harsh to my own;  but
the reflection of a single moment must show that the
harshness is  in our prejudices, not  in the word.   We
rebel not when we hear the expression "illiterate doc-
tor."  Indeed, while regretting the necessity for  the
use-of such a term, it becomes us that we like to hear
it, as it  is to the credit of  our intelligence  that we
recognize the something that sets itself as a  bar  be-
tween what  we know to be  a grand science  and him
who lacks even  the  conception of what it is  to repre-
sent it.   Men do not  confound the terms  illiterate
doctor and medicine.
  " It is a humiliating, but instructive, fact," says  the
learned and  most orthodox Dr. McCosh, "that  many
new discoveries in physical  science  have, in  the first
                                       (50 
52
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
instance, been  denounced as atheistic,  because  they
were not conformable to the opinions which religious
men had been led to entertain, not of God, but of the-
phenomena of the  world.  Even the illustrious Leib-
nitz  charged the system  of Newton with having an
irreligious tendency, and (as I  once heard Humboldt
denouncing, in  an  interview I  had with  him a few
months  before his death) sought to  poison the mind
of the famous Princess Sophie of Prussia against him.
It is a curious circumstance that  the law of gravitation
had to be defended on the side  of religion, at the  be-
ginning of last century, by Maclaurin, in his 'Account
of the Discoveries of Sir Isaac  Newton.'   In  the last
age, numbers, trained in a narrow theological  geology
(not found in Scripture but drawn out by wrong infer-
ence),  opposed  the  discoveries  as  to the  successive
strata and races of animated beings on the  earth's sur-
face, and could  scarcely be  reconciled to  them when
such men as Buckland and  Chambers, Hitchcock and
Hugh Miller, showed  that these facts widened indefi-
nitely the horizon of  our vision, added a new prov-
ince to  the  universe of God, by disclosing a past his-
tory before  unknown, and  opened new and  grander
views of the prescience  and preordination of God.
And in our times there are persons who cannot take in
these new doctrines of natural  history and compara-
tive  language;  not because they run  counter to any
doctrine or  precept of religion, but because they con-
flict with certain historical or scientific preconceptions
which  have  become  bound  up with   their  devout
beliefs."
  It is related by Dr. Elam that when Sir Humphry 
CORRELA TION.
53
Davy was making his  great researches into the consti-
tution of the earths and alkalies, some of the chemical
•professors felt greatly aggrieved at having their pre-
vious notions disturbed.  A noted professor in a Scotch
university refused  all recognition  of these  researches,
as long as he decently could do so.  When ultimately
compelled to make  some  allusion  to them, he  did it
very  briefly, accompanying it  with the opinion  that
Mr.  Davy "was a very tiresome man."
   Correlation means the conversion  of one thing into
another thing.  Thus, if I take a basin of water, and,
placing it over a  fire, bring  it to the boiling-point, I
change, or  correlate, the water into steam.  And now
again, if I catch this steam and put it into the receiver
of an engine and  confine it there, so that in its expan-
sion  it  can act alone upon  the piston, I convert  it,
through the instrumentality of the machine, into power,
and  with the thing thus secured I drive a train of cars
or a  steamship.  If a piece of zinc and a piece of copper
are placed in a receiver together with a menstruum of any
solving fluid, sulphuric acid for instance, an action  of
dissolution and combination, which at once commences,
results in a new production, or a change of one thing,
or force, into a new thing,—this  new thing being,  in
this  case, galvanism.   If now, desirous of another con-
version, I subject this force to the influence of an elec-
tric  machine, I possess myself of a new form of power,
through its  correlation into  electricity.   Electricity I
may convert into heat, heat into vegetation, vegetation
into  a man, and so on in an eternal round.  This, then,
is correlation, or  the conversion  of one  thing  into
another thing. 
54
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
   Correlation is a sermon so loud, so grand, that all of
earth, and sky,  and heaven makes its voice.*
   Where  may one  begin  to speak of correlation,—of
the everything,  and nothingness, of matter?  Life is a
circle,  without  beginning,  without  end;  there  is  no
commencement, we may catch the link anywhere.  To
speak of bodily death is a misnomer, or,  if by death we
mean disappearance, then is the  term of even  cruder
meaning;  a dead man disappears not even so rapidly
as does a living one, and  the more rapidly a live man
dies, the more vigorously does he live.
   The tenure of a man upon what he holds is so slight
that one may scarcely reckon the time in which he holds

  * " Two things," said Immanuel Kant, "fill me with awe,—the
starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man."
  " In his hour of health, and strength, and sanity, when the stroke of
action has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific
investigator  finds himself overshadowed by this awe of Kant.  Break-
ing contract with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with
a power which gives  fullness and tone to his existence, but which he
can neither analyze nor comprehend."—Tyndall.
  " Positive philosophy maintains that within the existing order of the
universe, or rather of the part of it known to us, the direct determining
cause of every phenomenon is not supernatural, but natural.  It is
compatible with this to believe that the universe was created,  and even
that it  is continuously governed  by an intelligence, provided we
admit that the intelligent  governor adheres to fixed laws, which are
only modified or counteracted by other laws of the same dispensation,
and are  never, either capriciously or providentially, departed from."—
Mill.
  "A little philosophy," says Bacon, " inclineth men's minds to atheism,
but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for
while the mind of man looketh upon causes scattered, it may sometimes
rest in them  and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them,
confederate  and linked together, it must needs  fly to Providence and
Deity." 
CORRELA TION.
55
it.  The individuality, the Ego, is the inappreciable;
around  this  clusters that which we call the man, but
which is, in  fact, that which rather conceals him  from
our sight. The curling locks, which the barber has just
thrown among his refuse, are not our friend; yet, only
an hour back, we distinguished  him by these very locks.
The envelope of a man is truly  of the  dust; and as dust
it is with him to-day, it is with something or somebody
else to-morrow.   It is added to, or thrown off from, a
man in  every respiration, in  every  motion,  at every
thought, every turning.   Let  the  blacksmith  hammer
with his brawny arm, and his  biceps grow to clubs.
Let  the fakir bind up his leg, and  it  dwindles to a
reed, too feeble for the  support of a child.  The epi-
thelial scales which, in the morning ablution, are washed
from the face of a beauty, may,  on some other morning,
adorn her tresses in the shape of a leaf from her garden ;
while the leaf,  faded  and cast  away, may,  in  its  turn,
give to  the  passing cow  the means for the milk which
gives back  to beauty, in convenient season,  the  lost
epiderm.
   Of matter, as the material, there is in the world just
so much.  We call nature lavish and prodigal, but this is
not just.  Nature is like unto a coiner, who, in his pro-
duction, throws aside  that which is of the same value as
the gold which he perfects; but  he wastes not his residue:
simply does he  remelt it, and  thus its coinable charac-
teristics become as before.  To stand with educated in-
telligence in the presence of nature,  is to stand before
God and be dumb.  Who  may utter the simplicity,
which is itself the stupendous !   Twenty-six marks are the
life of all the tomes of  the English language,—fewer 
56        ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

elements (as we may some time come to learn) consti-
tute  the world.   Take the gases, substances which we
see not, yet themselves made up of less tangible things;
put together a few atoms of oxygen and a few atoms of
hydrogen, and behold the wonderful result in water,—
that  same water which is in itself nearly all  the body of
a man.  Take again a few atoms  of  oxygen  and a few
atoms of nitrogen, and behold atmospheric  air,—that
air which is the life and breath of the man.   Will you
distinguish between the piec« of charcoal, which you
throw from your soiled fingers as an offense, and the
precious diamond  so  carefully guarded?—it is a few
equivalents of carbon, only this.   God plays with the
elements as the poet with his letters, as the musician
with his notes.  Poetry is the correlation of the twenty-
six marks of the alphabet into  words, which words, in
their turn, make ideas, and these, in turn, fire  a soul
or soothe it.   Music is the correlation of  seven notes
into  harmony, and  harmony rolls from earth to heaven,
and  from  heaven back again to earth.   Shall not God,
from a single element, make all  things, as even from
the wood  of  a single  tree has  a  man  made  his  house
and  the furniture of it?   I doubt me if our  sixty-four
elements  shall not soon  develop into compounds.   I
think it can scarcely be that Omnipotence  needs more
notes wherewith to make his harmony than does a man.*
  * It is suggestive that at a period when mankind had about wellnigh
wavered from a polytheistic faith and the Greek mind had dawning over
it monotheism, that Thales, the most reflective of his age, felt that he
found a synonym, at least, of this God in Water. A distinctive character
of the  Ionic school was inquiry into the constitution of the universe.
Thales, speculating upon this constitution, could not but strive as re- 
CORRELATION.
57
   Let us break this circle of life  at the link  of man.
What is man ?  A composition of body, of spirit, and
of  soul.*  Let us  analyze  these.   With  the first, at
least, we shall have little trouble,—to this our knowl-
edge is quite equal.
   The anatomist, looking at man purely as an animal,
discovers him to be a machine made up of,  first, a bony
framework, which affords to his form stability and up-
rightness.  That he may have the conveniences of mul-
titudinous  movements, he finds this  skeleton composed
of  very  many pieces,  even so many as two  hundred
and six  distinct  bones; these,  in character,  differing
as indications require of them,—some, for convenience
in locomotion, being long;  some short, where strength

marked by his biographer Lewis, to discover the one principle,  the
primary Fact, the substance of which all special existences were but the
modes. Seeing around him constant transformations,—birth and death,
change of shape, of size, and of modes of existence,—he could not re-
gard any of these variable states of existence  as existence itself.   He
therefore asked himself, What is the invariable existence of which these
are the variable states ?  In a word, what is the beginning of things ?
  " To ask this question was to open the era of philosophical inquiry.
Hitherto men had contented themselves with accepting  the world as
they  found it, with believing what they saw,  and with adoring what
they could not see."
  Thales felt that there was a vital question to be answered relative to
the beginning of things.  He looked around him, and the result of his
meditation was the conviction that moisture was the beginning.  He
was impressed with this idea by examining the constitution of the earth.
Here also he found moisture everywhere.   All things he found nour-
ished by moisture. Warmth itself he declared to proceed from moisture.
The seeds of all things are moist.  Water, when condensed, becomes
earth.
  * To Anaxagoras, five hundred years before the Christian era, are we
indebted for what may be termed the  physiological recognition of a
spirit force; it was crude, but he had caught the idea. 
53
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
and compactness are required ; some flat, as where a
cavity is needed, or extensive surface for attachments
demanded;  some irregular, as where  indications are
of special character.
   Passing from the general to a special examination of
this framework, the inquirer finds his wonder begin as
he recognizes how everything seems to have been con-
sidered  and provided for.  Analyzing a young bone,
for example, he finds that in its composition it  is quite
half made up of animal matter,  differing in this respect
from the bone of the adult, which contains not so much
perhaps as twenty per cent.  Here we  have explained
the infrequency of fractures in children, and recognize
the Divinity that protects  the tottering and uncertain
footsteps of infancy; the  bone of a little child  will
bend, but it will hardly break.  Again, let a long bone
be examined, the bone of the arm, or of  the thigh, as
we may please to pick either up.   In moving our own
limbs we do not feel the weight of these bones, and  yet,
considering what the arms have to endure and to what
the legs are  subjected, we infer that they must be very
strong, and this indeed they are, but made so, not through
mass of material, but arrangement.  Let  a section be
prepared of one of these, and the riddle is explained,—
the bones are cylindriform:  there is then very little
weight,  for it is not mass, but form, that is depended on.
We illustrate this to ourselves by tearing in twain a sheet
of foolscap paper. Rolling the two halves up, one in the
form of a cylinder, the other  with  the layers tight and
compact, we find the first to support a weight perfectly
astonishing in comparison with the  other; and from
our experiment, too, must we recognize that here it was 
CORRELATION.
59
that man learned the strength of the tube.  The skull,
too,—examine it; its office is the most delicate, and per-
haps the most important, of the skeleton.  Within  its
cavity is an organ so delicate that even the force of  an
ordinary blow, carried to it, would derange the harmony
of its actions, whilst the shock which would  come  of
jumping only a single foot,  if not provided against,
would destroy it forever.  See the provision made  by
nature for the protection of this organ.  The cranium,
instead of being composed of a single piece, is made  up
of eight bones; these, in their articulation, are so  ar-
ranged as to deaden and to disperse blows received  by
any one of them.   But more important than this,  we
find,  in examining any of the  pieces,  and, of  course,
the whole  of the vault, that it is composed of three
layers,  the middle  being so soft  and spongy as to  be
completely non-conductive;  showing to us at once that
a blow received upon the external  table, or layer, would
have  indeed  to be very severe in character, if  even it
were  so much as felt by the brain, or even, indeed,
by the internal plate.  This explanation we demonstrate
by  the  experiment  of the balls,  so  familiar  to every
student of physiology.  Four or more balls, one being
of spongy bone, the others of ivory, are suspended to a
frame by strings of equal length, so that when the balls
are in position each rests one against the other.   If the
spongy ball be removed from  the line, and the first
ivory ball be drawn back, say  one foot, and then  be
allowed suddenly to fall against its neighbor,  it will  be
seen that the force of the blow is transmitted from ball
to ball, as proven by the last one flying off in the direc-
tion of the impulse given by the first; indeed, measure- 
60        ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
ment will show that so fully has the force of the blow
been transmitted, that the distance passed over  by the
last ball  is almost equal to  that of the ball  giving  the
blow, so direct and full has been the transmission of
the impulse.   Repeat now the experiment, putting  the
spongy ball in  the  line: the last ball does  not  move,
the blow has not now been  transmitted, the cellular
ball has absorbed the whole of it.
  The relation of the brain to the trunk is precisely on
the same principle.  A shock received upon the feet,
from falling or jumping, is entirely lost as  it tends to
pass from vertebra  to  vertebra,—cartilages,  placed  be-
tween each of these bones, breaking the conduction and
completely absorbing the force.
  Covering the framework of a man are the muscles—
instruments of  leverage, every one of them—soft, yield-
ing,  yet  possessed  of a force  that  explores seas and
overruns  territories.   A muscle in man differs in no
respect  from the meat of a butcher's stall; but how
wonderful  is that which so little attracts observation!
Pull a muscle to pieces: it is composed of  a hundred
little muscles, and these little muscles, in turn, are made
up of a hundred others.  It is no matter that we term
these latter fasciculi  and ultimate  fibers;  the greater
differs in no respect, save in bulk,  from the  smaller.
  A muscle possesses a life force peculiar to itself:  we
call it contractility. As with the sensitive plant, apply
an irritant, and instantly it contracts, or  shuts upon
itself.   Not only does it possess this life while the man,
of which it is a part, is said to live, but even after men
call  him dead  does it continue.   Prove this with  the
electric  shock, and the life of the muscles will speak 
CORRELA TION.
61
from their dead and senseless envelope of integuments.
Take the heart  from a living sturgeon: the heart is
simply a muscle; lay it, all palpitating and beating as it
is, upon a plate; it will palpitate and beat for days, as
though it were a perfect life in itself.  The phenomenon
is not  less wonderful that we say the heart possesses a
ganglion of its own.
   Shall we look at the liver of a man ? it is a great viscus,
the very largest gland in the body.   To understand it,
men have had to  study it in sections and relations.
And yet,  coming at last to the anatomical ultimate, we
describe it  as  a  cell, a very little cell, with a tube of
outlet  from  it.  Around  this cell, enveloping it, are
vessels of supply blood,  and vessels of venous blood,
—this is all.  From the vena portae, bile is eliminated,
and the associate veins are simply the carriers away of
refuse  material.  The little tube seen passing from the
cell is a bile duct.   This is the  liver, all of it.   The
great viscus is only a repetition of these little cells.   It
took, however, many generations and ages to make this
analysis, and even now that it is made, the  miracle of
bile secretion is not less a mystery ;  for why should the
little cell  make bile ?
   Take next the brain.  It is a soft, semi-fattish-looking
mass, the  most unsolid and unsubstantial seeming thing
in the body.   Let us analyze it:  out of one hundred
parts, some eighty are nothing but water,  such water as
one washes his hands in.*  Eight more parts might not
be told from the white of a common egg.  A little fat,
  * The writer will not be understood as expressing himself in the
chemical sense. 
62        ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

red and colorless, some osmazome, lactates, and phos-
phates, and this is  all, physically, of that instrument
which  acts to the revolutionizing  of lands and over-
turning of continents.   Who may explain it ?  Oceans
lie still and idle in the summer sunshine,  albumen, in
great excess, rests inert in every hennery, fat covers the
shambles, and inorganic matter  forms the hills of the
earth.
  Is it wonderful ? is it beyond faith ?  Yet Dante, and
Shakspeare, and Milton, move and thrill  these brains
with twenty-six marks.  It is wonderful, yet  is it sim-
ple.  Further does the  likeness go:  letters, while so few,
are exhaustless.  Who  shall write them out, or who fail
to find them for his transpositions ?  G-o-d, spells, and
implies to us, all that  is great, all that is  glorious, all
that is worshipful.   The very same letters reversed, and
a common animal  is  set before  our imagination.  A
brain—the brain of Plato—buried, or planted  by a hog-
pen, comes back, most likely, nothing  better  than  a
thistle, scattering weeds instead of truths.
  Even a brain—we will not say mind—is matter, and
whether wheat  or weeds shall come from it,  must de-
pend on  the relations  of its particles to  the something
superior  to it.   This  is in the province  of  creation.
Does such an argument convince a man of the absence
of free agency ?  Well, then, let it excuse the shiftless
poverty that  tills  not  a field, because, left  to  itself,
weeds cover it.
  The  body of a man  is a machine, from which, as  a
model, all invention  has  drawn  its inspiration.  So
beautiful   is it  in  its  proportions, so accurate  in its
adaptation of means to ends, so  costly,  apparently, in 
CORRELATION.
63
 its apparatus, that one looking at it without experience
 would say,  Surely so grand a thing was made to last
 forever.   Does it?
   To deny  the resurrection of the body is to speak the
 words of a  fool.   As two added to two makes four, so
 surely is the body of a man resurrected,  and  so surely
 does  it live forever.  And this is the resurrection  of
 the body,—as science demonstrates it.
   The body of a man, be he king or subject, wise in
 all learning or blank in all ignorance, is matter, simply
 matter,—the same kind of matter precisely as exists in
 the horse which he  drives, or the dust he strides over.
 The bones which bear him upright differ not in analysis
 from those  of the cat purring at his feet, neither do his
 muscles present differences with those of the ox he kills
 and  feeds upon.
   When a man dies we bury him from sight.  But when,
 after  a greater or lesser length of time,  we open the
 tomb wherein we laid him, he is gone.  Where ?
   When a  stick of wood, tough and gnarled, and re-
 sistive of the axe, is laid upon the blazing  coals, it  soon
 disappears,  and nothing is left of it,  not  even, after a
 very short  time, the handful of ashes; it is gone.
 Where?
   When the dead bird, which yesterday was killed and
 left lying in the forest, is, after a week, searched for, it
 is  not found ; it is  gone.  Where ?  All are  on the
 road of their resurrection.
  A  man, a  log of wood, or bird, subjected to analysis,
are found made up of like material, differing alone in the
combination and arrangement of particles.  As respect
is paid to these particles, nature shows no preference,— 
64
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
decomposing and disintegrating a dead prince with as
little regard for the odor of the sulphuretted hydrogen
evolved, as though the noble had been the hound with
which, in chase, he may have lost his life.
  Decomposition is recomposition, and recomposition
is resurrection.  Of the handful of dust left to us of the
dear friend dead ten years ago, we see that part of  the
body we knew most resistive of change: the rest is gone;
part of it before first he was covered from our sight, for
even then his eyeballs had sunken and his cheeks had
become wan and emaciated.
  The brain of a man we have  seen  to be composed
almost wholly of water;  so, in like, is every portion of
his body.   The evaporation of  the fluid constituents
of a human body carries full ninety per cent, of it into
the atmosphere.*  What becomes of this part of him?
It mingles with the moisture of the elements, and soon,
condensed  into drops of water, falls back to earth, to
be drunk by you  and by me, by the herd of the field,
by the forest oak, and by the lily nestling at  its root;
and thus, sucked up by the veins of a man, or cow, by
the rootlets of the tree, or flowers,  it finds a new exist-
ence  almost  ere  it has  lost the  old.  What  of  the
residuum ?
  When a  man has consumed  his wood, he saves his
ashes for the cornfield.  Now, for experiment's sake, he
plants of his  grain  two  hills; into  one  he puts ashes,
into the other none.  When the harvest-time  comes,
lo,  where  the ashes were placed is his  crop  double.
  * Blumenbach possessed the perfect mummy of an adult Teneriffian,
which, with its entire viscera, weighed only seven and a half pounds. 
CORRELATION.
65
Then he says, "My ashes have I turned into corn;"
and this he knows is truth.  Then, weak from his labor,
and  lank, he eats of his corn, and new life and vigor
come to  him.  Again he says, "I have changed my
corn into a man;" and this he also feels to be a truth.
Where the battle-field was  covered most thickly with
the slain, men come to  gaze  in wonder at the luxuri-
ance of the verdure.   Alas ! the husbands, the fathers,
the sons, long looked for at the family hearth, are, by
the wand of the enchanter,  converted  into  the long
vines and rank grass  that moan  uneasily in the night
wind.
   An eccentric man declaring he would not  lose the
limb which had been  amputated, buried it by the root
of a grapevine;  the crop,  when  the season came, was
threefold.  As he ate of the fruit he said, "Thus I
resurrect myself to myself."   And surely he did so.
  Where the dead dog rotted  on the bank-side, the sod
is rank with life,—there are maggots,  plenty of them,
but the dog is gone.   In turn, the birds of the air will
find the worms, and thus, with wings, dog and maggots
shall fly through the  sky—simple translation through
the decomposition of compounds into  elements,  and
the recomposition of elements into compounds—this is
the story of the circle  of matter.
  Is it horrible thus to dispose of a man ?  The problem
of the body it is, remember, we are discussing.  A man
is more than the body;  to confound the body and the
man is worse than is  confusing the clothing and the
body.
  Man is a complex organization: this is most true;
but the  law  which evolves and  creates  him  works
                         5 
66       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

with as little effort as that which produces a diatome or
a sponge.   Indeed, I  have frequently thought that the
overweening self-respect a man feels for his  body must
come, necessarily, of an ignorance which excludes him
from an ability to compare himself with the rest of crea-
tion.  Matter is matter. The autumn frosts wash out the
fresh green from the waving leaf, and the autumn frosts
wash out the fresh  bloom from the cheeks of beauty;
and beauty and the leaf fall, and  mingle their dust, on
a common floor.
                       SPIRIT.

   This is the second person in the trinity of a man.
   The  relation of the spirit to a man is of the earth,
earthy.  True, we may not  define its  form, neither
render  its analysis; but this is only because of inability
from ignorance,—it is a something that escapes a posi-
tive demonstration, yet not negative proof.   "Answer
me a question," said a rich Hindoo to a begging fakir,
"and I will relieve thy necessities.  Thou sayest there
is a God, and that thou knowest it.   Show him to me
and tell me what color he  is."  The  fakir  sat musing
a moment; then,  gathering  a ball of  clay  from  the
ground whereon he sat, suddenly, and  without warn-
ing, cast it with  force into the face  of the  inquirer,
who, in pain, ran  roaring away.   "Thou hast pain,"
screamed the fakir after him ; "thou knowest it.  Show
it to me and tell me what color it is."
   When a man lies sleeping, wrapped in  profoundest
slumber, he breathes as easily, digests as comfortably,
aerates his  blood as  fully,  and performs all  functions
of organic life as satisfactorily, as when his  most wake- 
CORRELA T10N
67
ful moments may be spent in considering these things;
and he does  thus because these functions are presided
over by a power which can  operate entirely independ-
ent of his  judgment or direction.   The relation he, in
his Ego,  holds  to  these things is as the relation of a
master to  the servants in  his kitchen,—the servants,
not the  master,  do the work,  and the work  can go
on, even although the master travels thousands of miles
away, just  as it  goes on when,  with watchful eye, he
stands on the threshold of the scullery.
   Let us look at the natural reasons for this.
   Examining the constitution of  a man, we find  that
he has a twofold nervous system, distinct, indeed, as is
the parlor of a house from the kitchen.  The one,  the
cerebro-spinal, occupies the cranial cavity and spinal
canal.   It  is the very lord  of the mansion,  or, better
speaking, it  is the  residence  of the lord,—his living-
room.   The  second, the sympathetic, consists of a
number of little bodies, or ganglia, scattered over  the
house, standing in place like so many servants, which,
indeed, they are, each  one having a  special duty to
perform, and doing it without,  in many instances, re-
ceiving  ever a command  from  the  occupier of  the
premises.   The body, as an organism, might be truth-
fully likened  to  a hotel, in  which, with no directions
f;om a guest, the work, without confusion or fail, goes
on, the  Resident finding  all his  wants  anticipated.
The relation  of the sympathetic nervous system to  the
cerebro-spinal is  no  closer, nor more intimate, than that
of parlor and kitchen through the bell-wires  ; indeed,
the more one studies the relation, the  more  he is im-
pressed with  such an analogy.  The parlor  can com- 
68        ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

mand the kitchen, as it is the  higher  power, but a
physical  kitchen  will work,  even  though, as in  the
person of an idiot, no parlor occupant resides  in  the
house.  Query ?
  As  a  servant, in his  physical  conformation,  differs
not from the master of a house, so do not the ganglia
of the sympathetic system differ from that of the great
brain.  Let a brain be examined, and it is found made
up of white and gray matter;  let a ganglion be bisected,
and the  two colors  are  found in like relations.  Ex-
amine in turn these white  and  gray substances, and
both are found composed of cells and conducting fila-
ments.   The analogy, however, stops here: the houses
are alike  in their general construction, but the  occu-
pants differ  vastly.   The resident of one  is spirit; of
the other, Soul.
  The subserviency and  relationship of spirit to matter
are exhibited in the  constant  union of the two,  and in
the similarity of  the natures of both.  Matter belongs
specially to no individual body, nor does spirit; neither
has its Ego.  As the  world contains just so much matter,
which matter correlates  itself from thing  to thing, and
is constant to no thing,  so spirit  is an essence diffused
through  all  things, the  special property  of no thing.
There is a spirit of the tree which throws forth the leaves
folded in the branches, there is a spirit of the ox which
chews its cud by the roadside, there is a spirit of the man
which circulates his blood and elaborates the chyle that
nourishes him ; but the spirit  is a common spirit, as is
common and  transmigratable, the  matter of the tree,
the ox, and the man.   The  same  spirit  is of the tree
to-day,  of the ox to-morrow, of the man  the next day, 
CORRELA TION.                6g
  When a grain of wheat is buried in the earth, it impreg-
nates, through the spirit that is in it, surrounding influ-
ences, and springs up out of the ground enshrined in a
new body;  and the very matter of which the grain was
composed, rotted, and resolved into elements, is sucked
up and made new in that which came from it,—body
is correlated through  spirit, and spirit  is  enshrined
through body.
  But, by the first  grain was sown a second, yet  from
it came nothing.  Wherefore?  This second grain was
matter alone; it  had no life.  Because, then,  that  it
produced not as  the first grain, it differed from  it in
the absence  of something, and this something was that
wherein*  consisted  its vitality,—a something  unseen,
unseeable, yet recognized  by every man who distin-
guishes of one thing that it  lives, of another that it  is
dead.
  Is, then, that which is the life of a thing of less con-
sequence- than the  matter composing the thing, that
when it goes out it is annihilated ?  Nothing is annihi-
lated ; everything is immortal,—at least in the earthly
sense.  What, then, becomes of spirit ?  Just precisely
what becomes of  matter; it is used again,—used  over
and  over forever.  There  is just so much spirit  to
animate just so much matter; from necessity they  must
correlate in concert, and this they do.
  The life which went from the grain of wheat found a
new combination, as did the matter  of the grain, and
both exist to-day as both existed in the beginning. 
70
ODD  HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
                       SOUL.

  What may a man  write, or think, of his soul,—the
divine part  of himself, the Holy Ghost  residing in a
temple of flesh ?   The soul of a man is the man, the
only thing worthy of consideration, or thought, or care.
It is the Ego, the individuality, that which  is, and shall
be,  the only thing which changes, or correlates, never.
  " I cannot," said the monarch Cyrus, when he came
to die, "persuade myself to think that  the soul of a
man, after  having sustained  itself in a  mortal body,
should perish, when delivered out of it, for  want of it."
  Epictetus, when suffering agony from the cruel treat-
ment of his master Epaphroditus, smiled as he  told
him,  "That if his  leg was  twisted  longer it would
break;"  and this  did  result without disturbing his
composure.   When  asked  how he could maintain his
equanimity, he replied, " That the body was external."
  "The soul," believed  Plato,  "is, and ever was, im-
mortal.  In its anterior state of existence  it had accu-
rate conceptions of  the eternal  truth.  It  was face to
face with existence.   Now, having descended upon
earth, having  passed into a body, and being subject to
the hinderances of that bodily imprisonment, it is  no
longer face to face with existence ; it can see existence
only  through  the  ever-changing flux  of  material phe-
nomena.   When, for example, we see a stone, all that
our senses convey-is the appearance of that  stone ; but,
as the stone is large  or small, the soul apprehends the
idea of greatness; and this apprehension is a reminis-
cence of the world of ideas awakened by  the sensation.
So,  when we see or hear of a benevolent action, besides 
CORRELA TION.
71
 the  fact,  our soul  apprehends the idea of goodness.
 And all our recollection of ideas is performed  in the
 same way.  It is as if, in our youth, we had listened to
 some mighty orator, whose printed speech we are read-
 ing  in old age.  That printed page, how poor and faint
 a copy of that  thrilling eloquence! how we miss the
 speaker's  piercing, vibrating tones, his flashing eye, his
 flushing face ! And yet, that printed page, in some dim
 way, recalls these  tones, recalls that face, and stirs us
 somewhat as we then were stirred.   Long years  and
 many avocations have somewhat effaced the impression
 he first made, but  the printed words  serve faintly to
 recall it.   Thus it  is with  our immortal souls.  They
 have sojourned in that immortal region, where the voice
 of truth rings clearly, where  the aspect of truth is un-
 veiled,  undimmed.   They  are  now sojourning in  this
 fleeting, flowing river of life, stung with resistless long-
 ings for the skies, and solaced only by the reminiscences
 of that  former state, which  these fleeting, broken, inco-
 herent images of ideas awaken."*
   "Know thyself," said Proclus, repeating the Delphian
 inscription,  "that  thou mayest know the essence from
 whose source thou  art derived.  Know that of  the
 Divine One thy soul is but a ray."
  The expression "ray" is, to the mind of the writer,
one  of  the most suggestive in  relation with the soul.
Man was simply  a mould of earth ; God breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living
soul,—i.e. into him entered of God Himself: "Know
that thy body is the temple of the Holy Ghost."   " De-
* Lewis. 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSIC TAN.
file not thy body, which  is  the  temple of the  Holy
Ghost.''   Floating through the German type of thought,
having especially no author, is the enunciation, " Man
is  God and God is  man."   The idea might invoke a
volume of reflections.  It is not sacrilege thus to asso-
ciate ourselves, our souls, with whence we came.  Yet,
may two classes alone consider such a relation without
confusion,—the profoundly philosophical, and the pro-
foundly simple.
   Falling back upon the assertion, that, in the common
voice is found the truth, it is felt and recognized that
every instinct of  man points him to immortality,—no
faith, no doctrine,  no belief has the widespread base
of the  immortality of the soul,—in  some form or  other
it  is the faith of every living being.   The religious sen-
timent itself is, as remarked  by Baring Gould, a  fairly
presumable  proof that there is a something  to be ob-
tained beyond  mere worldly  good.   " Every  other
instinct," suggests Mr. Gould, "is seen to have some
positive aim  and object, and it is against the analogy
of nature to suppose the religious instinct an exception."
   Psychologically viewed, catalepsy might be described
as a condition of the body, in which, for some of sundry
reasons, the soul is temporarily unable to make use of it.
   Somnambulism yields a negative proof of the separ-
ability of spirit force and soul force.   A somnambulist
walks,  precisely as he digests.   At the  hour of his wan-
dering one  recognizes (aside from  the  excito:motor)
no controlling or directing influence.   The senses,  the
avenues pertaining alone to soul-life, have in them no
sensori-motor expression ; the man  looks, but  he sees
not; he listens, but hears not.  If he feels, it is simply 
CO PRE LA TION.
13
with organic sensation, and with no instrumentality of
appreciation as the sense proper of touch is concerned.
  "When we  are awake," says Aristotle, "we have a
world in common.  When we dream, each has his own."
  A special sense destroyed, it is seen how  the soul
struggles not  to lose, in  the direction, the power  of
communicating with the world.  A soul having lost its
avenue  of  sight,  will feel a color, or co-ordinate  its
movements  through the  senses of hearing and touch.
A deaf man will hear through his eyes, as, when blind,
he reads through his fingers.
  " If I would epitomize Schelling," says Mason, in his
"Recent British Philosophy," "it would  be in having
him express  faith,  not  as a spasmodic action of the
soul straining  into a void, but as that certain intuition
of absolute truth which has been, is, and ever will be,
the sustenance of mankind, the basis of religion, and
of all great action,"—soul instinct.
  Animism, among the  lower races  of  mankind,  is
markedly exhibited  in their uninstructed perceptions,—
an  illustration of which I certainly  may  not better
render than by allusion to a late review, in the Psycho-
logical Journal of Medicine, of the new work of E.  B.
Taylor on  "The Philosophy of  Religion among the
Lower Races of Mankind," and on which subject, for its
widest range, the reader may be referred to the "History
of Philosophy," by  the learned George Henry Lewis.
  Religion, with heathens, if we choose so  to  express
ourselves (though I  must affirm that to me few appear
possessed of higher  or purer light than was Confucius
or Socrates), divides itself into two grea^divisions:  i.
Souls.  2. Spirits. 
74
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
  "The savage mind,"  says this review, "appears to
have been especially struck by two groups of phenomena,
which they endeavored  to account  for on a scientific
theory.
  {a) "That which constitutes the  difference between
a dead and a living body, the fading of light from the
glazed eyes, the cessation of breath, the stoppage of pul-
sation, the loss of consciousness and voluntary motion,—
in a word, of the phenomena classed together under the
heading 'Life.'  These  they especially associated with
the  breath.   How naturally we  may learn  from the
story of the deaf, dumb, and blind Laura Bridgman's
dream, which  she described by  the gesture  of taking
something  from  her lips,  explaining  in  words, ' I
dreamed God  took  up my breath  to  heaven.'   The
language of the world will express this deep-lying con-
nection  in  the many cases where the word  breath has
come to denote life or soul: from the Australian wang
and the Malay nawa, to the Semitic nephesh and the
Indo-European pneuma, anima, ghost, etc.
  (F) "The phantom copy of man seen  in dreams and
visions,  apparently thin enough  to  flit  through space
and permeate solid nature, and to evade the dreamer's
waking  grasp.  This  is especially and naturally asso-
ciated with  the shadow, an association  also well ex-
pressed  in  languages, from  the  Ojibway otahchuk to
the  Indo-European skia, umbra, shade."
  "Now, the  savage to a remarkable extent connects
these two conceptions into what may be called an ap-
paritional soul, a ghost-soul.  He considers that what
causes death ^.nd what  causes visions and dreams are
one and the same.  There are some who try to separate 
CORRELA TION.
75
them, as the Greenlanders and the Feejeeans;  but the
generally received  connection  of the  life  with the
phantom  into a soul-ghost  is the very key to savage
psychology."
   "Thus the Nicaraguans held  that when a  man dies
there comes out of  his mouth something resembling a
person, which is the life, and which departs to where the
man is, but the body remains here.  Parallel to this is
the African  conception of the man's shadow seized by
a monster, whereupon the man  afterwards dies.  The
soul-ghost appears in dreams and visions.   Live men's
souls may do this, as when a Feejeean's soul goes out
in sleep and  troubles other  people ;  but especially the
souls of the dead are supposed to do this. Thus Wilson
says of the negroes, ' That their dreams are visits  from
the souls of deceased friends,' and the habit of talking
dreams over makes them dream the more, till they have
almost as much intercourse with the dead in  sleep  as
with the living in waking, and can hardly distinguish
dream  from fact."
   "The animistic theory, as it explains death, so among
many races explains sleep, and with this dreaming works
in, as when the  Greenlander lies insensible while his
soul goes out visiting and  hunting.  The Karens clev-
erly account for our seeing known places in dreams by
saying  that the leip-pya can only find the way where it
has been before in life.  It explains  coma (where the
body lies senseless while the mind wakes with new ex-
periences), as when  Australian or Khond sorcerers go
out of  their bodies  for spirit-knowledge, or when, in
the Vatus-daela Saga, the Fins sent to visit  Iceland lie
rigid while their souls go out on  the errand and return 
76
ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN
with information.   Of classic tales appropriate to these
things, is the story of Hermotimus, whose body his wife
burnt while his soul was gone out in search of spiritual
knowledge.   It explains  sickness, as when the Karens
call back the kelah of a sick man, and the sick Feejeean
may be heard crying for his own soul to come back."
   " When the body dies, the  soul departs  to its place.
Not content with this, the lower races assist nature, and
when a warrior or chief dies, dispatch wives and  slaves,
whose souls are to continue their earthly relations. Thus
the Feejeean and African are buried with wives,  slaves,
etc., the custom extending  upward in  the Hindoo
suttee, etc."
   "That animals, 'our younger brothers,' as the North
American calls them, have souls like men, is an obvious
inference to the  lower races.   Therefore animals also
are sacrificed for the dead,—the horse for the red  In-
dian,  the  dog  for  the  Aztec  and  Greenlander,  the
camel for the Bedouin."
   "As regards the  details of the doctrine of a  future
life  among the lower races, no immortality  is  recog-
nized,—the soul  is  ethereal  and surviving, not imma-
terial  and immortal.  It carries on a mere  continued
existence,  as  shown by dreams and visions.  The de-
scriptions of future existence current among the lower
races are not limited to a single theory, but may include
every idea likely to occur to  them.  The conception
may be roughly divided  as follows :
   i. " The doctrine of the ghost hovering or wandering
on earth, or coming back occasionally to visit its former
home, is displayed among mankind  from savagery up-
ward,  especially  causing the prevalent fear of graves; 
COR RE LA TION.
77
and the practice of offering food for the dead, usual
among most savage races, lasting on among such nations
as the ancient Romans and  modern Chinese, and even
now surviving in form in the Eastern  Church.
  2. "The doctrine of metempsychosis.  The trans-
migration of the souls of the dead  into other human
beings is well marked among the Greenlanders, where
widows will make it a plea for the adoption of an orphan
child by some  rich man, declaring it to have received
the soul of some one of his  family; or among tribes of
Nootka Sound, who account for the existence of a dis-
tant tribe speaking the same  language,  by supposing
them  animated by the souls of  their own dead.  In
Africa the dead" are buried near the  living, that their
souls may enter new-born children.   The indigenes of
Africa, America, and Asia account in this way for like-
ness to deceased relatives, and look for personal likeness
and marks of ancestors on new-born  infants.  The be-
lief in transmigration into animals is well marked among
the lower races, as in Greenland, where a  man will avoid
a particular animal as food, on the score of a deceased
kinsman  having passed into such ; among the Icannas
of  Brazil,  who imagine  that  brave  warriors become
beautiful birds, and  cowards, reptiles ;  or the  Zulus,
who believe that certain harmless common house-snakes
are animated by the souls of their deceased kindred."
  In the very center of the  encephalic mass of man is a
little body not  larger than a pea, called by the anatomist
the pineal gland.  This body, the ancients affirmed, was
the seat of the soul. They thought this because, running
from it, they discovered certain lines which seemed to
them  as  reins,  through which  the body might  be in- 
78        ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
ferred  to be directed, and because (permitted alone to
dissect idiots) they found this little body to  be  filled
with sandy particles.   Recognizing a distinction be-
tween spirit and soul, and not allowed to examine the
pineal  gland  of a perfect man, the inference was a
natural  one, that in the presence of this acervulus the
idiot differed from  others;  and as what they esteemed
the soul was absent in the idiot, so, as all other parts of
his brain had a normal  appearance,  it seemed a just
conclusion that here was its seat.
   The brain of a man,  with the exception of a circum-
ferential wall of cells, and a ganglion lodged here and
there, is simply a mass of filaments or cords.   Cleverly
traced, these cords are found to run to every avenue of
sense,  and to associate with  them  return  cords  from
such avenues, so that  it would seem as if the creative
faculty of the mass  lay strictly and exclusively in the
wall of cells;  and here, differentially judged of, it does
reside.  Now, as we understand that the actions  of
this part of the  system  are  not an immediate necessity
of organic life, we locate here the highest relations of
the human organization, and look here to see  what we
may of the material associations of the soul.
   As a king sits  high above his subjects upon his throne,
and from  it speaks behests that all obey, so  from the
throne of the  brain cells is all the  kingdom of a man
directed, controlled, and  influenced ;  for this occupant
the eyes watch,  the ears hear, the tongue  tastes, the
nostril smells, the skin feels; for  it language is ex-
hausted of its treasures, and life of its experiences;  loco-
motion is accomplished, quiet insured.  When it  wills,
body and  spirit  are  goaded   like  overdriven horses. 
CORRELA TION.
79
 When it allows, rest and  sleep may come for recupera-
 tion.  In short,  the slightest penetration may not fail
 to perceive that all other parts obey this part,  and are
 as but ministers to its necessities.
   But we are not to be understood as confounding the
 encephalic cells with the  soul.  It  is only that  through
 these, as a mechanism,  the  soul finds  its  expression,
 just as steam must have  an engine for  its expression.
 Steam, however,  is not less motive force, or the equiva-
 lent of it, that it rushes unconfined through the atmos-
 phere, and  soul is not  less soul,  or less life, in lacking
 a machine,  or agent, through which it may hold com-
 munion  and discourse  with  earth.  The oratorios  of
 Haydn are not organs, violins, and cymbals, but these
 material things are the instruments through which alone
 the oratorios speak, and without them the grand strains
 remain voiceless.
   In what men call dreams, seem best  exhibited  the
 separability from the body and the individuality of the
 soul.   Not only this, but  its habits, when disembodied,
 may be understood ; more even  than this: it should
 dispossess man of the regard for his flesh, exhibiting to
 him, as it does, that his pains and  his aches, his cares
 and  his  anxieties, his  slow  progresses and  his cloggy
 relations, are  not really of himself, but of the  dead
 weight which, in his body, he carries.   A dream would
 seem  to be simply the  stepping out of one's self from
 the confinement of his house.   The  house of a man, the
 body, lies sleeping upon its bed ; the Ego stays  with it,
 or not, as it wills.  Think  what a dream is.  And is not
 that what the soul  is?  No bounds or space  confine it,
a body it makes  to itself at  will, it is as much in  a 
So        ODD HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN

body of its requirements when out of its flesh as when
in it;  in short, it is, to its own  will, omnipotent; how
it shall move, who can say ?  What it may do, who may
imagine?   Height, depth,  width,  length,  these  are
boundaries lost to  a soul the moment it  disembodies
itself.   "Who seeth me in his dreams," said Moham-
med, "seeth me truly."
   To know the soul apart from the body is to know one's
self, and only thus, I conceive, may one's self be known.
Can any man  so contemplate his individuality without
desiring to come to such an estate ?  Can he look upon
death longer as a something to  be feared and dreaded?
If a man may hunger not, what  to him are the anxieties
of support ?  If he thirst  not, what to him the drought
that consumes?   If the elements may not incommode,
what to him are the conveniences the body demands?
   The Ego—=the soul—is the relation of man to God,
all else of him,  body and spirit, are of his relations to
earth.   The body  and the  spirit of a man change in
their association with him at every breath and in every
pulsation.   The Ego—the  identity, the  individuality
—is, and shall be.   This science stands in awe before,
—this is above science.   This science recognizes, but is
dumb in its presence.*

  * It is felt that this conclusion of these thoughts is not fully satisfac-
tory, but to extend them before the general reader would not be to add
to their interest, and might possibly lead to undesirable confusion.
Many aspects of view necessarily present themselves for recognition;
for example, it might be asked, wherein differ the encephalic cells of
the lower animals from those of man ? Or what is the soul state of an
infant without intelligence?  Or what is the condition of an  anen-
cephalia? Such questions the learned reader may not fail to perceive
would be injudiciously broached, when only a few  pages  could be
spared for their consideration. 
THE
PHILOSOPHER'S  STONE.
I WAS sitting, one morning of the past winter, before
   the great furnace in the laboratory of the Professor
of Chemistry  in  the  University  of Pennsylvania,—a
place most promotive of reflections,—and as  I looked
through its open mouth on the mass of glowing coals, and
about over the mysteriously furnished walls, and into the
nooks and chinks, filled with multitudinous and strange
things,  I  thought, naturally,  of the alchemists of the
olden time, who,  in just  such mystic places, had con-
sumed  their gold and their crucibles, their hopes and
their aspirations, their health and happiness, in attempts
to discover the philosopher's stone.  And I thought,
as I  sat there, how wonderful  it was, how more than
passing wonderful,  that these  learned  and reflecting
men failed to see  that that for which they sought lay at
their feet, and enveloped them in its atmosphere!
  You have read, in the Arabian Nights, the  story of
the Fisherman and the Genie.  How, when  the vase
was opened, there'ascended from it what was apparently
a meaningless smoke, but by  degrees the intangible
vapor collected itself and assumed, at length, a  solid
body, and  became in shape as a genie, greater in him-
self than all the giants.
  From the vase of life, and from life's beginning, has
been going out a vapor,—the vapor of its truths and
experience,—a vapor which, to this nineteenth century,
and  which,  to the  centuries  of the alchemist, should
                        6              (81  ^ 
82
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
have been seen to be the genie greater in himself than
all the giants.  Closer and closer has this vapor col-
lected  and embodied itself, until  at  length, with the
astonished fisherman of the Bosphorus, we see the genie,
and we exclaim, "The Philosopher's Stone."
  Aladdin, you remember, when he needed an answer
to a  question, or felt a want, rubbed a lamp which  he
had obtained ; from this lamp came a genie who never
failed him,—the lamp was truly Aladdin's philosopher's
stone.
  Tarquinius Superbus possessed the Sibylline leaves,—
the oracles of the Sibyls were the voces deorum.
  Themonas sat upon the  tripod, and  from her lips fell
jewels.  Jupiter was the  inspirer of wisdom,  and the
uttered words commuted  themselves into gold for the
adornment of the shrine.
  If you had a stone, or lamp, or leaves, which, being
consulted, would tell you everything you might know
for your good, would  you not say, "This wealth of a
possession is surely  the philosopher's stone"?
  Well, as my own uses at least are concerned, I have
found  such a stone, and this  is the history of its dis-
covery.  See if it may be  also the amulet for  you.
  I am the fortunate owner of a cozy, comfortably-situ-
ated country house.  When, from the great world, from
the noise and confusion  of the bustling town, I find
myself in its vine-covered porch; when, seated in easy
indolence, my eye wanders over the far-stretching pros-
pect before me, looking  at the white wings  of  ships
carrying their wealth of freight along the wide river,
listening to the songs of men in the fields; and when
the sturdy, ringing blows of my neighbor the black- 
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE.        83
smith,  at  the  bottom  of the hill, make a  kind of
dreamy music  to  the summer afternoon, then I have
always  gone stone hunting.
  One  afternoon—a very sleepy kind of a one it was,
too—in August, I  sat upon  the porch of the country
house retrospecting.  I had  thought as I sat there of
many things, — things  which  had long  since passed
wholly away, save in the odor of their memory.
  I had recalled, I remember distinctly, an incident of
some fifteen years back,  when, on the very threshold
of my professional life, I had found myself, one summer
morning, seated, in contemplative mood, in Washington
Square,—in this sad square  where, beneath  the pro-
faning  tread of the indifferent passers, lie entombed
that which was the flesh and blood, the  hopes, the
sorrows, and the joys of many citizens carried off by
pestilence,—nothing to mark their resting-place, then
requiem unsung, save by  the soughing branches of the
great trees which live in the glad sunshine above them.
Of these  mortals, their  lamps out,  their  individual
memories  lacking  a name, I sat there thinking; of the
living,  too, I thought.   What is  it to live?  I asked
myself.  I was just then twenty-five, and the blood was
running through my veins like molten  lava,—mine was
all the vigor of a horse fresh for the race.   I felt I could
not, would not, come to such feelingless dust as lay be-
neath me.   "Dum vivimus, vivamus.  If I had to die,
I would first live;"  this I said.
  What is it to live ?  To this problem my mind con-
tinually reverted.  What shall a man do to get the most
out of his life? At five-and-twenty all feel alike, all ask
about the  same questions.   Well, what was  the  first 
84
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN
answer that came to me, and what is the first answer
that  comes  to every man at  five-and-twenty ?  Ah,
Schiller !—Schiller, like Byron, immortal to the man
young and lusty.
          " Wer liebt nicht Weib, Wein und Gesang,
           Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang."*

  On the Orange  Street side  of Washington Square
stands  a very plain Quaker meeting-house.   I was at-
tracted  by the quiet looks of the people, as they passed
in at its wide, inviting gate; and having nothing to do,
for I was without a patient, I crossed  over and went in
with them.
  In this  Quaker meeting I sat;  an hour, perhaps, the
silence  remained  unbroken.   Finally there arose  an
old silver-haired woman, and the words she  spoke have
lived through  all the changes of these fifteen years, and
that August afternoon they had repeated, themselves in
the porch with the ring of their original freshness.
  "Why,"  said  this  good  woman  with a  message,
"why gad ye about the earth seeking that happiness
which is to be found alone within thine own heart?"
  The  evolution of a thought or an idea  is  held by
many men as unaccountable,—is  so, perhaps.  How
ideas evolve themselves from things as frequently unlike
as like  we may not decide, unless to say there  is a
Providence which disposes, let man propose as he will.
" Make this egg stand  upon its end," said Christopher
Columbus to the learned men who sat in judgment upon
his designs.   From whence was that thought, the more
* Quoted from Luther by Schiller. 
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE.
85
 wonderful from its simplicity, which cracked in the end
 of the egg  and  thus  supported  it upright?  "That
 apple," said Sir Isaac Newton, "tells me the unknown
 secret."   And now all schoolboys  comprehend the
 idea of gravitation.   Yet before the  secret in  its full-
 ness was divulged, countless  had been the apples that
 had fallen, and countless the eyes which had marked
 them fall; but in this  particular one alone was found
 the philosopher's stone.   Even the  stone of Kepler
 showed but  a  glimpse of the truth.  Who placed the
 stone in the  apple?
   As  I  sat  that August afternoon in the porch, the
 doctrine of the council ecumenical seemed to be in the
 atmosphere,—"Vox populi  vox Dei;"  and then,  in
 some strange, confused way, there seemed upon my ear
 the wailing lament of Faust as he listened to the drink-
 ing-songs of  the students; and Cain and Lucifer, plot-
 ting to defy God, came before  me; and then, in his
 turn, Napoleon, with a million lives sacrificed to his des-
 tiny or ambition, as this may be;  and again, good Titus
 Fulvius, who  thought it  so much better  to save than
 to  destroy; and why it was  I scarcely know, but  I
 thought, with a shudder of horror, of St. Bartholomew's
 night, and  recoiled on the other side when I remem-
 bered who, under the guise  of  a  higher profession,
 burned at the stake Servetus, without pity and without
 charity; and  of many other things akin, and not akin,
 I thought, and in the confusion which came of think-
 ing I said there is no  guide, and felt myself lost in ways
 which have no chart.  Like the fisherman of the Bos-
 phorus, I  looked on the smoke as it ascended, but could
see no form. 
86        ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
  Certain religious  professors, persons who  feel them-
selves converted, tell of a change, of a  transformation
which has come to them in a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye.   I believe in this ; it  was, and is,  what came
to  Archimedes in  the bath.   It was what came to
Columbus  when   he broke  his  egg.   It is what  re-
mained with Shakspeare until the  light  and heat from
his  pen fitted feudal England to appreciate  the higher
beauties of  the Bible.  It is that something which has
settled  in the brain of the inexplicable  prodigy, blind
Tom, and which strikes melody  where educated fingers
fail.  It is what  has come, and  what will come,  to any
and every person who happens to be in the way of the
stone as it  falls.*
  Now, some  persons think they have  one of these
stones,  yet have it not, and  other persons have one but
know it not.  A man, as  I saw by the newspapers,
dining at a  restaurant, bit, while eating an oyster, upon
a valuable  pearl, yet threw it in disgust away, because
he thought  it only a piece of shell.
  So it is.   So curious and various  are men  in their
visions  and  perceptions,  that a something, which to

     * Virgil thus describes the Pythoness under inspiration :
     " Her color changed, her face was not the same,
      And hollow groans from  her deep spirit came ;
      Her hair stood up, convulsive rage possessed
      Her trembling limbs, and heaved her laboring breast.
      Greater than human kind she seemed to look,
      And with an accent more than mortal spoke ;
      Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll,
     When  all the god came rushing on her soul.
      At length her fury fell, her foaming ceased,
     And, ebbing in her soul, the god  decreased." 
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE.        87
  one is possessed of priceless value, to another, has in it
  no life.
    But, to my philosopher's stone.
    As I sat, that August afternoon, in the porch, watch-
  ing the  meaningless  smoke,  suddenly, in  the very
"twinkling of an eye, did  the  form appear, and  from
  that hour to the present one have I rested in a positive
  conviction that I have a guide, as strong and as reliable
  as force itself,—a  genie greater in himself than all the
  giants.   Do  I  ask this genie a question, he answers it
  for me.   Do I put him a problem, he solves it.  What
  more can a man want in a philosopher's stone ?
    And this is the stone which came to me in the smoke,
  the life truth, which I fully believe is the very vox Dei:
  " The common  experience is the true experience."
    Let us at once take this stone,  this genie of a vase,
  this Sibylline  leaf, oracle, or this nothing,  as it may
  please you to call it.   Let  us put  it to the test,—let us
  get  proof of its genuineness.  What shall  we ask it ?
  What do  you desire to know ?   Suppose we ask how a
  young man, just passing from his  Alma Mater into the
  great business  life of the world, should act.  Ask it,
  Alumnus, if the rich man's fee should overshadow the
  mite of the widow.  Ask  it, doctors of a clinic, if the
  hours you spend in  your  services have not God  for a
  paymaster.  Ask it, faltering humanitarian, if laugh-
  ter provoked in the palace of gladness  is better  than
  tears stayed in  the house of mourning.   Ask it, young
  gentlemen, whether,  in the days  of  your youth, you
  shall make merry with Schiller, without counting the
  reckonings of  age.   You  are  thinking, Alumnus, of
  passing from  your college  to the  marriage state,  or, it 
S8
ODD  HOURS OF A  PIIYSICfAN.
may be, your aspirations are alone for a successful prac-
tice.  Ask about these things.  Ask what single-hearted-
ness has to  do with  success,—what, to  its uses, are
manly integrity and uprightness.   In short, ask the
stone which I have just given you, any and  everything
you may need to know ; it will answer you right, always
and for evermore.   This, as you look into it, from the
very nature of its constitution, you will perceive it must
do.   It is  the apple of Newton, the egg which stands
alone of Columbus,—it must be eliminated truth, just
as a man will say,  "Honesty is the best  policy;"  and
know it for  a living truth by an utterance he never
thinks to doubt,—the  utterance of "the common ex
perience."*
   Shall we here leave what you may think to be ideal-
ism, and for  the pleasure of logic chopping  try a pass
with the foils of our scholarship ?
   You will tell me that  my leaf cannot be Sibylline,
because that  the voice of men varies with times and
circumstances.  You recite to me of revolutions and of
counter-revolutions.   You  tell  of human slavery per-
mitted, and  of slavery abolished ; of bigamy a virtue,
and bigamy a crime ;  of cannibalism an instinct, and
cannibalism a horror.   And with the missile with which
the imperious sister of John Wesley smote  the soul of
that wrestling man, when, from the agony of his doubts,
he cried that he accepted the Roman aphorism, and

  * Locke, Hume, the  Sensational School,  and the Scotch School,
together with Gall and Aristotle, all hold to knowledge being of experi-
ence; i.e. the vox fopuli. " Experience," says Immanuel Kant, "is
not a deceit; human understanding has its fixed laws, and those laws
are true." 
THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE.
89
 that the vox populi was the vox Dei, you drive through
 my logic your foil, and  say, "Yes, it  cried Crucify
 him ! crucify him!"
   Now it is my turn.
   Can  truth  be truth to-day and  error to-morrow?
 Yes;  in the sense  of adaptation to requirements.   As
 certainly can this be so as that the same sun is the author
 of both day and night.
   Moses was of God, was he not ?  And Christ is of
 God.   Moses taught an eye for an eye and a tooth for
 a tooth.  And Christ enjoined that if a man take away
 one's cloak he was  to give him the coat also.
   In  the  time of Moses, and following his dispensa-
 tion,  man deemed  himself absolved from sin Avhen he
 paid  in kind; and thus, in requital  for his crjmes,
 he offered up  bullocks and lambs, and vox populi  said
 this was the Lex Dei.   To feel  this, and  to say it,
 man must necessarily have recognized that it answered
 the requirements of the times.   If life  is a progress-
 ive existence,  answer me,  then, how this could have
 been  less  than  what the common experience affirmed
 of it?
   Christ, the new dispensation,  taught  love, forbear-
 ance,  humility; taught  that more to repentance and
 atonement was a contrite soul with upward aspirations,
 than was the flesh and  blood of all  the  bullocks and
 lambs in the universe.   And when, in the fullness of
 Christ's age, the perceptions of man had been educated
 to the higher plane  of  such life relations,—when,  in
other words, the life progressive had prepared him  for
it, there was then no hesitation  in the transposition,
but law passed at once from Moses to Christ, and this 
9o        ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

because the law was  the common experience which
chooses always as it finds its good.
  But how reconcile the two ?
  I do not more fully believe in my own personality
than I believe in the laws of Moses;  and I do not more
fully believe in the existence of the sunshine than I be-
lieve in the laws of Christ.  And yet, as these seem so
in conflict, and the one has been  supplanted by the
other, can I logically believe  they are  both  of truth
and of the very highest right?
  I believe in slavery permitted, and I believe in the
abolition of slavery.
  I believe that bigamy may be the greatest virtue, and
that  it is  the greatest crime.
  I must  believe in cannibalism, even though with no
reasoning can I explain away, or excuse, that which
seems to me so horrible.
  These  things I  believe, because, in  different ages,
and under varying circumstances, the people have found
themselves, without volition of their  own,  in  these
various ways;  and the common  experience  has  felt
that these  things and ways were right,  and people livecf
in them, feeling no sense, or thought, of condemnation.
  To-day, all  people warm  their houses with coal;  a
generation back, and everybody  burned wood.
  Somewhere in the line of my reading I remember to
have met  with  an  essay, from the pen  of that genial
writer John Holland, on the "Unemployed Resources."
As I recall this essay, there comes to my mind the idea I
want. I propose to attempt to demonstrate that truth can
be truth to-day and error to-morrow  ; or, to put it in
better phrase, that truth is a synonym for requirements. 
THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE.
91
   I live, if you please, in a wide, unsettled country;  I
build my house where I like, and it is right.   You, on
the contrary, live in the midst of a great city; you
build your house where  you choose, and  it  is wrong.
What makes  the difference?  The voice of the people,
—the common experience,—this, and nothing else.
   One has a  farm on the frontiers, but has around it no
fences; he has no cattle, neither has he neighbors.  But,
after a time,  a community grows up, and cattle,  owned
by other people, intrude on,  and  eat from,  his corn-
fields ;  now  the experience of his necessities  begins
to change, and law changes to him, as, wherein it was
right to  have no fences it is now wrong to be without
them.
   Let us give the thought a wider range.
   In the beginning it must have happened that as man
grew into sensibility and advanced in intelligence, or,
in other  words, as circumstances made man feel  wants,
and wants became necessities, so,  for supply, he turned
into  the  channel which the most  naturally invited in
the direction of the want  felt.  Let us, as an illustra-
tion, take the matter of cold and  heat;  these condi-
tions, it  is but fair to infer, being  among the earliest
of his considerations.  Where, so  naturally as in the
forest, should man have learned the secret of  combus-
tion ?—a lightning stroke perhaps, or the friction of
swaying branches.   Received, however, as it might be,
whether by revelation, inspiration, or accident, it mat-
ters nothing.   Man had received a great truth.  Could
it have entered into the  thoughts of any one to have
rejected this fire, or to have desired, or thought to have 
92       ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

waited, for a something better?   Man had found what
he needed, and to him a fire of wood was the brightest
and greatest heat of life.  And all men repeated, '' This
is the brightest and the greatest heat;" and this it was,
and he who doubted, chiming not in with the common
experience, must have gone cold, even though beneath
the surface upon which he stood lay the  deepest coal-
beds of earth.   It was so, because of some great law
felt by mankind, but understood  not, having indeed
not even a  name, by  reason of which the resources
of life develop themselves in  their  order, and  in some
regular succession,—nothing coming ever before its
time, and nothing coming,  save as  out of the smoke of
the casket  came the genie.   Men scent the smoke,
men feel the smoke,  but see no form.  Yet, when the
time comes, in an instant, in the very twinkling of an
eye, the form appears; and he to whom it is given first
to see it, has but to point out the substance, and, sooner
or later, it becomes  seen of all men.   Who  now but
may crack the egg, or who but may read the law of the
falling apple ?
   But let us see the law (now so plain) of the burning
wood.  Tree-life must have preceded man-life, for the
reason that  a  soil was needed for the growing of that
which was to be his support.   So when  man was  born
into the world, hecatombs  of forests surrounded  him.
But, with this  birth,  the day of this law commenced to
pass away,—man felled these trees and burned them ;
forest after  forest disappeared.  Yet, as they burned,
man saw only smoke:  nothing  saw he of any form  in
the smoke.  So, generation after generation he burned 
THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE.
 the  forests, who shall  say  how many?   Finally, the
 balance of a law—the  natural  law—changed.   Man
 had  outgrown his ratio to tree-life, or rather, man had
 grown out of the tree-life.  The tree had  accomplished
 its mission  in making a soil of habitat for its successor,
 —a wonderful work, of which, however, man had recog-
 nized  nothing.  Innocent soul!  he thought that trees
 had  grown  for  the single purpose of being  burned.
 But  man felt that the place  of the tree was needed by
 him, and whether  he would  or not, the law of his cir-
 cumstances compelled him to cut, cut; and, as in dis-
 may he watched the smoke  of his dying fire, behold,
 suddenly it condensed itself, and the genie appeared,—
 the genie greater than the giant it had succeeded, and
 the name of the genie was "stone coal."
  Do we say to ourselves, "How silently and without
 sign did this great giant lie, till his law called  him
 forth?"  It was even so.  Just  as the great truths of the
 new dispensation assumed not  before men  its  form of
 resistless might, neither was seen  of them  until its
 habitat had been made by the lower organization of  a
 Mosaic period.
  For  generations of generations—who shall  say how
 many?—the white sails of man's ships floated over every
 sea where swam the leviathan,—the whale was the law
 and  the revelation  of oil, and other  there was none.
 So man, out of his common experience, said, "This is
 light."   And that  one, who, seeking a brighter or
more convenient source, accepted not this common ex-
perience, found himself  in darkness.   It  mattered not
that he walked over the oil streams of the Alleghanies, 
94        ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

he was in darkness;  he saw not, because  the time had
not come to see.*
  But time  passed  on, and man, in his development,
outgrew his  ratio to whale-life, just as before  this he
had outgrown the law of Moses and the law of the tree.
And now—and, mark you, not until now—did he carry
his  harpoon from  his  ship to the hillside*; and here,
far away from the confusing winds and buffeting waves,
did he strike deep, deep into the earth, and from unex-
plored streams, from miraculous fissures, flowed forth a
very sea itself of oil.
  Wood preceded coal, and the oil of the  animal  pre-
ceded the oil of the earth.   Who so illogical as to say
wood is not of truth, because it is now replaced of coal?
Or who would affirm that animal  oil  had  not  its ap-
pointed work, because there has come after it that which
man receives as a truth better suited to his needs?
  Need we pause to make  the  application ?  The law
of Moses was, though we  may scarcely even yet fully
understand it, what the wood was to the soil, what the
wood was to the coal, what the whale oil  is to the rock
oil, what, in a near future, decomposed water shall be
to obsolete stone coal.   Ah !  what is ,the  destiny of
  * In 1820, an expedition, under Major Stephen H. Long, was sent
to explore the country from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains.  The
object of the expedition was to inform the government of its resources,
and in it were learned men, representing every department of science.
" One hundred miles above Pittsburg," says the voice of this expedition,
" near the Alleghany River, is a spring, on the surface of whose waters
are found such quantities  of bituminous oil that a person may gather
several gallons a day."  Similar oil springs are noticed as existing also
in Kentucky and  Ohio.  But the  genie of the oil spring  uttered no
word, and the learned men passed on and saw him not. 
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE.
95
 man ? and what is to  follow that which, of necessity,
 must pass  away ?   Common experience changes with
 that by which it finds itself influenced and  controlled,
 and if it cries white to-day and black to-morrow—why,
 white and black we  shall surely find it, doubt  it  or
 reason upon  it as we may.
   But let us  again rub our philosopher's stone,  and ask
 it what of slavery, or what of anything else, which,
 being once its voice,  is not  now its voice.
   A country, says the stone, blessed with enlightenment
 and grace, with fields  so extensive and fertile that well
 might they have supplied with bread many famine-over-
 run lands, finds these fields powerless  for  their good
 from lack  of hands to till them.   A sailor, our stone
 goes on  to tell,  threading his way through barren and
 scorched lands, had exposed to him a race lost to every
 impress of humanity save the  form, a heartless  people,
 cruel, devilish.  As the sailor passed on his way, con-
 gratulating himself that his  own lot had  been so much
 the more happily cast, he came to a  rude, but strong,
 pen, the odor of carnage impregnating  its very logs.
 "This," said his guide,  "is where we keep prisoners
 taken in battle; and  as  we are always fighting, it  is
 always full, and  we stick pine splints into their flesh,
 and we  dance with delight as they burn, and as they
 howl and scream in their agony.  And we  twist them
and drown them, and we crack the skulls of their chil-
dren between great stones."   " Why, this is perdition
itself," said the sailor,  and tears ran down his brawny
cheeks. *
* See Saugnier's Travels in Africa. 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
  In his pity, to save these wretches, doomed to misery
and destruction, the white man had no chance but in
purchase.   So he  bought the slaves, and with them
filled  his ships ; and then back—a mission unrecog-
nized fulfilled—he sailed  to the unfilled  fields in the
civilized country.  For  his captives he  built huts, not
palaces, but yet,  houses better than in their own country
they had ever dreamt of.  Then into their hands he
put the implements of industry ; he taught them how
needs were most  happily and comfortably supplied,
showed them how to replace the wild meat of their flesh-
pots with the plenty of thrift; and having done all this,
he  looked  on them in  their bettered condition,  and
comparing it with the misery of the slave-pens, he said,
"This is Paradise."
  But it was not all Paradise.
  The children of the captives had not their skulls
cracked between stones, but the sailor felt it not wrong
to scatter  them among his neighbors, neither, having
bought them with a price, was he liberal enough to say,
You are free ; but he kept them in bondage, and they
toiled for him,—yet toiled at the  same time for them-
selves.  Just, indeed, as  labor always  has toiled  for
capital, or, more correctly speaking, as labor finds its
best good in a copartnership with capital,  as hands find
themselves most profitable when directed by a head, most
helpless when they depend alone upon their own sinews.
  But the  slaves learned the ways of the intelligence
which controlled them,—from the barren fields grew
out the fruits of knowledge, the ignorant and beastly
became the refined and human, the animal of the blood-
pen became the man of Christ's religion. 
THE PHILOSOPHERS STONE.
   Now, yet not until now, changed the vox Dei, as ex-
 pressed  in the vox  populi.  Gradually over  the  land
 went a voice, so gradually extended that man compre-
 hended not,  for a long time, what sound it was ;  then,
 as a  whirlwind, it culminated, and slaves and master
 were, in a moment, separated.   The whirlwind was the
 law  of development  and progressive evolution.   The
 sacrifice of life in the Rebellion was simply a result of
 man's ignorance;  he saw not the irresistible law against
 which he contended.   Before this law is there nothing
 that may not yield.
   Back to the land of the slave-pens has gone, and will
 go, the prisoner saved by the sailor;  but with him he
 takes a something he brought not.  Where stood the
 pen, he has built, and shall build, a Liberia, and his city
 is one set upon a hill, and from it the darkest places of
 Africa  are to be illuminated,  and the sunshine of
 liberty, freedom, and light, which  it gives forth, shall
 make barren hills and desolate hearts bloom and blossom
 as the rose, and Africa's people shall see, in the future,
 and  shall understand, with amazement, the workings
 of the wondrous law which disenthralled them.
  The price paid—think—was a very small one, and it
 was as the seed, which, to produce fruit, must  itself be
 cast into the earth  and perish.

  *   *  *  "Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the
earth."  No voice but the first speech has ever spoken
on this subject over the wide, unoccupied lands of Amer-
ica.   From England, however, and the over-populated
cities of France rises a first faint whisper,—the physicist
alone  here has heard the voice,—long may it be before
                         7 
9S
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
heed is claimed  for it in the ears of the people.   Yet
has the voice  modified  itself thus much to the world
that the speech to the patriarchs, which was the enjoin-
ing of  bigamy, now discountenances, to  this extent at
least, over-production.  An American writer may not,
however, give even thought to this subject;  but I con-
demn not my English brother, who seems to be having
it forced  upon him.
  Let  me close these reflections with  the  expression
of the Hindoos:  "The  great triad has, at  different
times,  become incarnate  in  different  forms  and in
different  countries, to the  inhabitants of which it has
given different laws and instructions, suitable to their
respective climates and  circumstances.  Thus it is that
religions differ, each being suited, and suiting itself, to
requirements,—the goodness of Deity naturally allowing
many roads  to the same end." 
TO-DAY.
" A l\ ^ND ^ie ^8nt-"   Tms was tne message; t0 tne
   IV A  world, of George  Fox, the founder of  the
society  called "Friends."   The  light of the world is
the experience thereof; the highest  good  is to walk
therein.*
   Never,  in any age, has there shone over the common
intelligence a broader sheen than to-day is beaming on
the minds of men.  The light which seemed heretofore
to have glimmered  here and  there for the few, is now
falling upon all  people; everybody is  thinking, every-
body is on the road of progress.  To-day is  as a morn-
ing, with the sunlight awakening the drowsy; mankind
are as sleepers aroused.  The  people stand alert, watch-
ing the growing light and looking towards the meridian.
What next ? is the expectation.   Prejudices, like marsh
mists  before advancing morning, are  disappearing.
The injunction of the Quaker  has become  the watch-
word of science.
  It has come most  powerfully to strike the intelligence
of the age, that  in  man's relation to,  and worship  of,
God, he has been exhibiting little else than selfishness;
his  prayers have  been "give," "give," and  his wor-
ship, for a prize not otherwise to be obtained.  Heaven,
 * " Error does not arise from the senses being false media, but from
the wrong interpretations we put on their testimony."—ARISTOTLE.
                                       (99) 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
the object of his  adoration, has been as a something
having little connection  with  the  present,  being a
country geographically afar off, and only to be reached
in some distant future.  Where has ascended one thank-
offering for  the good which "covers man as with a
garment," a thousand  petitions  have  been  clogged
about it.   From night until morning, and from morn-
ing until  night, it has not been much but weary com-
plainings, lamentations,  and cravings.
   This, if God was a giver as man gives, might not be
at least without judgment in us, for then should we hope
to weary  Him into compliance; and there are not  too
many  in  his world who  would be  ashamed of such
littleness and meanness.
   But  God gives  not as man gives.  True, a sparrow
may not fall without notice, no more than may a planet
combust; but no  special decree or observation recog-
nizes either.   A sparrow  falls in law as shall a world
disappear.   But this, instead of being for us to regret,
should prove rather our  joy, and, indeed, a fullness of
satisfaction;  and  will  so prove when a  profounder
knowledge of the  Creator shall give a profounder faith;
for we shall  come clearly and fully to see our duty, and,
walking therein, shall arrive  at that confidence which
trusts,  even though it seems that He "destroy us."   We
shall have learned that "what is, is  best."
   Law, then, is the government of  the world and of
all things therein  contained; and this  law,  like unto
man's  law, is a studyable  code.  To read and to know
the law, is the wisdom of life.
   The yet too common cry that the present  is an  age
of skepticism, is only the lingerings of the voice that 
TO-DA Y.
IOI
goes ever before truth.  The age, rather, is that of inves-
tigation and research, not  infidelity, except, indeed,
that to be  infidel  is to advance to higher and greater
thoughts.   Men have ceased to be satisfied with  that
acquaintance with  their Creator which has held Him at
such an immeasurable distance,—they are wanting  to
get closer, they would lessen, or annihilate, the space
of separation, as, with steam and electricity, they have
discovered that the spaces  of earth are to be anni-
hilated, and in so  great an undertaking  they are most
happily succeeding, and  the  success is  coming from
"minding  the light."
   The scientists of the day, it will  readily be  per-
ceived, have not yet acquired the skill to read fully the
hieroglyphics themselves are unearthing;  but they con-
tinue not the less  vigorously to work, and the cipher,
which is to prove the key to the whole, may not forever
elude the search.   In this, then, their aspect of to-day,
they may well be compared with the apostles of Christ,
who, reading the   Saviour daily, recognized not the
kingdom He represented.
   Surely it  cannot  but be that the day is not far distant
when the theologian and scientist  shall join efforts.
Thus is it  to be that man is the more quickly to arrive
at the grace in  store for him.,  Whom men have served
alone in  the faith, Him is the  scientist to declare  in
fact; then  shall exist the halo which is  to  enable the
very blind to see.
   Science and truth are synonyms, and synonyms  may
not belie each other.   If, in  the developments daily
being made by the learned men of the age, there seems
to be any conflict with doctrines of the Bible, the fault 
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
resides, not certainly in that book of truths, neither, as
I conceive, is it in science; but a future will exhibit
that  it is  to be  searched for in a still-enveloping
ignorance,  which permits  not  men to make a  recon-
ciliation of even parallel things.  1 will  be excused in
suggesting  that, for my own  part, my reading and my
reflections have so entirely satisfied me of this, that I
cannot but express regret at  seeing separated workers,
who, in all  reason and common sense, should be holding
to the  same end of the rope.
  As exhibiting the mutual  relations which naturally
exist—so fas  as common good is concerned—between
theology and materialism, I may not but instance  an
illustration exhibited  in  a work lately published  by
the learned  President of  Princeton  College, entitled
" Christianity and Positivism."  In reading this author
one recognizes a master, not  accepting him alone in
faith,   but impressed with the conviction that  always
does he know, fully and widely, just what he is writing
about,—a  virtue  not  by any  means possessed by  all
his fellows, as witness some of the Boston " Lectures
on Christianity and Skepticism."  It is a fact, a very
unfortunate one, that most men of reputation and parts
are one-sided,—this, indeed, being the secret of their
prominence.   Not more  certainly does this apply to
the theologian than to the scientist.   While  by the
world  a man may be esteemed learned because  of that
which  it hears from  him, yet it  may,  indeed, very
well  be that  he knows little aside from his specialty
and is  entirely incompetent to the reconciliation of his
own with  other truths.  In the wider sense, then, of
"learned" do I offer my respect to our Scotch  visitor. 
TO-DA Y.
103
 Dr. McCosh, it seems to me, has read everything, and
 has also well digested the mass; and from this learning
 and his ability to appreciate concurring facts, he makes
 it felt that he has found the treasure which casteth out
 fear.  I will not compare this man  with Darwin, with
 Huxley, Herbert Spencer, or Maudsley, but I may not
 hesitate to say that he is not of less  breadth of outlook
 than either of them,—certainly he makes it recognized
 that  he has walked the paths, both of theology and
 science, to  the  point  at which they are found  to run
 together and make a common road ;  we see him in this
 road, and feel it to be the true one.
   The progressiveness of man's appreciation of his re-
 lations to his Maker, and to nature, may be very well
 illustrated in an observation of him in  connection with
 his worship;  that is, that  in proportion to his  intelli-
 gence does  he grow out of forms and ceremonies.
   The wisdom of the  Romish Church, in its adoption
 of signs and symbols, is placed beyond dispute when a
 momentary  consideration is given to the material com-
 posing  it.   It will be instantly admitted,  I presume,
 that the mass of the  Roman Catholic world are  not of
 that education of which is  begotten  the reflective cast
 of the Quaker mind,—taking  this sect  as the other ex-
 treme,—and in just so far as these people are behind the
 Quakers in just such proportion must their requirements
 differ.  Confession, to a Friend, would justly be a bur-
 lesque; to an  illiterate man, I can conceive of it being
 his salvation, or, if not this, I may imagine,  at any rate,
 nothing better calculated  to keep him from offense.
The ceremonials, the garniture of the altar and  of the
priests,—these appeal to the eye, and have, from the 
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
beginning, been the instruments of impression on simple
minds.  A man whose  attention could not otherwise
be interested is thus attracted  and taught.  Pictures,
images, signs, relics,—these are  to the man-child what
they are to the infant-child,—are necessities of worship,
and will, no doubt, long continue to be.  But, if men
grow, these things may not last; people naturally grow
out of  them, cannot help  but  grow  out of  them,—
just  as we grow  out  of quack  doctors, grow out  of
lawyers, learn too much to accept "image  and sign
for essence."   It is not an  argument against this that
the Romanist, when educated, still holds to his ceremo-
nials.  There are many reasons why  these should  be
retained by him,  not the least of which is the impolicy
of his losing influence and  command  over a  mass  of
material not otherwise restrainable, and which  com-
mand the general good may pray that he retain as long
as possible.   Or, again, it  takes a wide knowledge to
educate a man  out  of his prejudices.   Or, still again,
one  may  very justly ask if other work  is given this
people save  this.   To this latter view I would myself
rather incline.  It seems most in accordance with life
relations; to the tortoise  is given the  earth, to the
eagle, both earth and  sky.   I  can imagine, however,
nothing but the eventual passing away of all ceremonial
observances; and on such a principle,  it seems  to me a
necessity of nature as it grows into spirituality, that in
some distant  future all  people will be  found gathering
in the  silent waitings  of the Quaker form  of worship.
I satisfy myself of this by observing that as a man  be-
comes reflective and unselfish, he inclines to simplicity
and retirement.  Tinsel and gloss no  longer allure or 
TO-DA Y.
i°5
  attract  him, fine  churches are a  reflection  upon his
  charity, because he has come to a recognition of the
  fact that to Him who  is beauty itself, the abortions of
  men can be no compliment.  I will not, of course, be es-
  teemed as reflecting particularly on the Romish Church.
  I am speaking  only to a principle.  I am  not at all
  adverse to the confession that I hold creeds and profes-
  sions as of such little import that to me they seem like
  the playthings with which children amuse themselves.  I
  only assert a belief, founded on the relation of things,
  that knowledge and ceremonials cannot coexist.
   So, as man  grows out of ceremonials does  he grow
 also out  of prejudices.  I  am not  to affirm that an
 educatd man is without this fault, but I may assert that
 a learned  man  is.   There is a marked distinction be-
 tween the  two.  An educated man, feeling he  knows
 much, may possibly be vain.   A learned  man,  recog-
 nizing that  he knows nothing, must be humble.   I
 never knew a truly learned  man who was not simple-
 hearted, and who  found  not his highest pleasure in
 things deemed by the world of little consequence.*
   The discussions of the age, no matter what the range
 or who the authority, are groupable  under two heads—
 Naturalism  and Christianity.  The  first may consider
 man  alone  from the aspect of an organized  force of
 nature.   This is the fullest  application of its range.
 The second has to  deal with the soul-life of man, and
 this  is that life of  which the body is nothing more

  * " So much learning," said Atterbury, speaking of Berkeley, the
famous bishop of Cloyne, "so much knowledge, so much innocence
and so much humility, I did not think had been the portion of any
but angels till I saw this gentleman." 
106       ODD  HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

than the  temple.   Naturalism  is a science by and in
itself.   Soulism is a something by and in  itself.   The
relations of the two have no closer identity than the
chariot horses of the Phaedrus;  it is true  enough both
are in the same  harness, but yet are they separable, and
sooner or later must be seen of all men so to be.
   A fault of the age seems to be the inclination  to the
speedy seeking  of conclusions ;  perhaps, indeed,  it will
be found  to be that this is the greatest drawback against
which learning  has to contend.  " When I was a  young
man," said an  eminent  practitioner of medicine, "I
had  twenty remedies for every disease, but now that I
am an old man I have  scarcely one remedy for twenty
diseases."   "The man  should  be hanged  without  a
doubt," said a juror, who had listened to one side of
the testimony.  "The other man should be hanged,"
he said, when the opposite side had been heard.  Now,
how naturalism can contend  with soulism is simply
inconceivable.  A soul  is only  of the material part,
as is a man  of the  house in which he  has  taken up
his residence.  And a body is not  to  the real  and
true life  of  a man  of more  signification  than his
house.*  Often have  I thought of  this separability
of existence as  I have  meditated over  the bodies and
parts of bodies one finds scattered through every part

  * It must be that there is much one does not comprehend, but the
known may give faith in the reasonable unknown.  What is called
centrifugal force, or the opponent in nature to gravitation, is  simply a
name having in it no scientific meaning; but that there is a something
that harmonizes the relation of the planets no one may doubt. And
this something, this  law, whatever it is, will be found quite as simple of
recognition as gravitation ; indeed, it may very well be that it is gravita-
tion. 
TO-DA Y.
107
 of a dissecting-room.   Kick a dried leg, as you find
 it covered with dust in some overlooked corner:  it
 makes no  complaint at the  insult; it rolls away, as
 does the bone you kick after it.   Stick the  scalpel
 deep into the brain from which you have just removed
 the calvarium: there is no wincing; pound the mass
 in a mortar, and as the ashman comes, mix  it with
 the dirt he carries, and, as he goes off, wonder if any-
 body may  tell  the  difference  between dust  and dust.
 Open the eyelids of the body that lies upon the marble
 table:  how dead and cold and meaningless is the orb !
 " Surely," you think, " this did never-smile, nor love,
 nor sparkle."  No, it did not; but the soul that used
 it did.   Yorick's  skull was not Yorick.   Open  the
 dead jaw,  and with tenaculum pull forward the flabby
 tongue fallen so far back into the  throat.   Is this the
 organ which whispered the honeyed words of Claude, or
 screamed  the battle-cry of a crusading Peter ?  No,  it
 is simply a piece of worn-out machinery, thrown away
 because no longer needed ; particle by particle you may
 cut this up, searching for its secret, but you search in
 vain ; the power and the secret have left it.  Then you
 say,  " What is a body that I should be mindful of it?"
 and you leave that room never again to confound body
 and soul.   Yet, for all, how wonderful  is the machine ;
 how complex ! Twenty years, perhaps, you have studied
 it, and still do not know it all.  If the  materialistic, in
 even so limited a portion of the territory, is thus incom-
 prehensible, who  shall  doubt, because  that he cannot
 compass the immaterial ?  An atheist is simply a fool,
and deserves not to be considered.
  Can a man understand and analyze his soul,—his real 
io8       ODD  HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN.
life ?   I have never  yet met the man who understood
fully the body,—never one.   But I know close students
of the mortal part, and of all the natural sciences, and
these are students in the laboratory of God, and are
the men who come  the nearest  in  the contemplative
view of the  incomprehensible.  From these, people are
learning of God's attributes.
  But the  fault of the materialist is that in  too many
instances he lacks width to read the writings he himself
exposes;  yet  this is only  manlike.    The  microsco
pist, for example, is very apt to fall into the conviction
that the only things  to  be seen  are such as pass over
the field of his  glass.   I knew  a philosopher of this
class, who,  on one occasion, got his head broken by the
overtoppling of a crazy book-case, which an ordinary
person might have seen  the unsafety of, and yet, at the
moment of the accident, he had  just developed among
the last lines on Nobert's test,—certainly about the most
unseeable thing in science.   This lack of  outlook is a
fault of the materialist, but, as before implied, it is cer-
tainly not less  the  fault of the theologian.*   Both,
  * Let me shelter this assertion where few may venture to criticise it.
" Chserephon, my friend," says Socrates, " being at Delphi, ventured to
inquire of the oracle who was the wisest man, and in answer was told
that none were wiser than Socrates.  Then I reasoned with myself:
What does the god mean ?  What is the enigma ? For I am not con-
scious that I am wise, either much or little.  .  .  .  Afterwards, with
considerable difficulty, I had recourse to the following method of
searching  out his meaning.  I went to the politician, the greatest of
the day.   I questioned him, but found he was only wise in the opin-
ions of others and in his own, but not really so.  I thereupon endeavored
to show him that he fancied himself to be wise, but was not truly so;
for my pains, I became odious, both to him and many others who were 
TO-DA Y.
109
however, are broadening  to  a wider horizon; rapidly
is the sense of the distinction between body and soul,
the mortal and  the immortal part,  extending  among
scientists.   If Darwin believes  in,  and  demonstrates,
a progressive development, it brings us  simply to the
creation through natural laws (which would be nothing
different  from a special creation to the same  end) of a
body or  organism  capable  of  receiving a  soul as a
tenant, just as a father might refuse to put a son into
any house but one specially built  for him.   Or if Mr.
Huxley pleases to place protoplasm as the basal element
of  life, wherein  does he disprove,  or even affect to dis-
prove,  the  influence of the original cause, which, out
of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, makes pro-
toplasm ?   Protoplasm is  not life;  the yelk  of an egg
is not life, nor still  is it  the albumen;   yet  are both
elements of life.   The germinal spot even  is not the
entity,  though  from this we  find  form  to start.  The
aphorism of Virchow, " Omnis  cellula e cellula," yet
explains nothing of the mystery; neither, as I  under-

present.  When I left him,  I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser
than this man, for neither of us -appears to  know anything great or
good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows  no-
thing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do.
In this trifling particular,  then, I appear to be wiser than  he.
  "  I went to the artisans, for I was conscious to myself that I knew
scarcely anything, but I was sure I should find them  possessed of much
beautiful  knowledge. And  in this I was not  deceived, for they knew
things which I did not, and in this  respect  they were wiser Man  .
Bit, O Athenians, even the best workman appeared to  me to have
fallen into the same error as the poets, for each, because he excelled
in the practice of his art, thought that he was very wise i:i other most
important matters, and this mistake of theirs obscured the wisdom that
they really possessed." 
ODD HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN.
stand it, does the physicist attempt to argue outside of
the materialistic aspect of the question of life.   Whence
came the original cell is certainly a question not foreign
to the thoughts of the naturalist; or, if  a very common
sense had not  suggested this, assuredly the refutation
of M. Pouchet's  experiments  by  Pasteur would have
been the sufficient  asking of it.   Does Comte, or his
successor, Herbert  Spencer, ascend  to a  first cause?
On  the  contrary, with  Mr.  Mill,  with  Professor Bain,
and Mr. Grote, they assume that  man  may study only
phenomena.*  But are phenomena causes?  Is a flash
of lightning or a peal of thunder a  cause ? Who tells, or
even attempts  to tell, anything of either when he de-
scribes it as a phenomenon ?   When  Mr. Mill writes
of ideas  as  generated from sensations, and " feelings     A
springing up in an unknown way  by means of this as-
sociation of things," does he  tell, or attempt to  tell,
anything of action  in  the abstract ?   Nothing of the
kind; certainly nothing so far as the exhibit, of a cause
is concerned.   I have often myself described  to large
classes  the  phenomena  of  nerve  force,  but  I never
dreamed of having attempted  to explain aught  save
the merest mechanism of the matter.   And if  it should
  * The materialistic discusses not God, but approaches Him through
that it may discuss. "The conditionally limited," says Sir William
Hamilton, " is the only possible object of knowledge and of positive
thought;  thought necessarily supposes conditions.  To think is to con-
dition, and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possi-
bility of thought.  For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip his shadow,
nor, by a more appropriate simile, the eagle outsoar the atmosphere in
which he floats, and by which alone he may be supported, so the mind
cannot transcend that sphere of limitation, within and through which
exclusively the possibility of thought is realized."
I 
TO-DA Y.
Ill
have been that one followed me through  the week of
lectures  it takes for  such a  demonstration, he  must
always have  found at the close that we had  simply
reviewed a machine;  of the force using this machine,
—the soul, he must have left the lecture-room to  com-
mune  with,  and think  of a  something higher  than
matter, as did the lecturer.
  The doctrine of Dr. Maudsley, of the non-unity of the
soul (see his "Gulstonian Lectures delivered  before the
Royal College of Physicians of London"), places  him
in a category in which he seems to  lack that  solid  basis
of support possessed  by nearly all  other  materialistic
co-workers.  I say this in  all respect for the learning
exhibited by the gentleman.   What Dr. Maudsley says
of the soul seems  precisely  analogous to saying  that
it is "an engine which  drags a train," having at the
moment  in one's mind no recognition of  the steam
which is the force of the engine.  One may only  express
surprise that so fallible and loose  an assertion could
have  gained  a  moment's reputation for profundity.
"The s6ul,"  says Dr. M., "is an  unity  only  by the
combination and co-operation of the brain-cells, and it
shifts moment by moment, and is dissolved by the dis-
solution of these cells."  Again I find myself unable to
comprehend why the  notoriety of  this view  (let  it be
good  or  ill  as it may) attaches at all to Dr.  Maudsley,
as  in  the  "Rapports du  Physique  et  du Morale de
l'Homme," of Cabanis,  I find the same idea.*
  * The theories of Dr. Maudsley (see " Mind and Body") were ad-
vanced, one hundred and twenty odd years ago, by Pierre Cabanis.
  " By an unfortunate phrase, Cabanis gave his antagonists an advan-
tage, and impeded the progress of his own views.  He was understood 
ODD  HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
   The premature deductions of men may be viewed as
clouds shifting over the  face of the sunlight.   Indeed,
it  may be that these are  necessary to an ability to look
at the light at all, as is the atmosphere  with  its fogs to
the  looking at  the  sun.    We  certainly could not see
the sun half as truly as we do without some interposed
veil.    Try  the  experiment  on any cloudless  summer

to  say that the brain secretes thoughts as the liver secretes bile.  He
said nothing of the kind, but his language lent itself easily to the mis-
conception ; and the ridicule and disgust which assailed it seriously
damaged the dignity  of the physiological method.  This is what he
did say:  ' Pour se faire une idee juste des operations dont resulte la
pensee, il faut considerer le cerveau comme un organe particulier des-
tine specialement a la produire.'  Had he stopped here," suggests the
author from whom I quote, " few would have seen anything to cavil at,
but he added, ' de meme que l'estomac  et les intestins a operer la
digestion, le foie a filtrer la bile.' This is really saying nothing different
from the  hypothesis of Maudsley,  ' that thought is a function of the
brain.' "
  The  fallacy of Dr.  Maudsley, as it strikes me, after a most  critical
leading of him, lies, to express it mechanically, in his not distinguishing
between the power and the machine, between the steam of the  engine,
which is a something in itself, and the engine, which is a something in
itself.   In the summing up in his third lecture, he repudiates the aphor-
ism of Sir William Hamilton :
            " On earth there is nothing great but man,
              In man there is" nothing great but mind."

But he has done it on  such insufficient grounds (in the arguments of
his book) that  they have failed to impress me to the slightest extent.
In a physiologico-mechanical  expression  his whole argument  of the
unity of body and mind  is thus statable : "There can be in itself no
such an independent force as steam, because, unless the engine is per-
fect, steam is not found able to drag a train, propel the  steamship, or
drive the wheels of a factory."  This  fallacy, it seems to me, certainly
must strike any one w.hose  knowledge of physiology will enable him
to  analyze Dr. Maudsley. 
TO-DA Y.
ri3
day,—it is at such a time that the orb is certainly most
exposed; yet, we find that now we may not see it at all.
But the light is to be seen through clouds, even  as we
do darken a glass that  we may trace  the  sun's disk.
And a  suggestion, be it  erroneous  or  true,  provokes
thought, through which thought, or out of which, comes,
sooner or later, a disproof, or verification.*
  * " Mind," says Dr. Maudsley, " can only be studied with any pros-
pect of advantage by the physiological method."  Dr. Charles Elam,
in  his " Problems,"  criticising Dr. Maudsley and Huxley, says, " It is
true that for purposes of discussion, and in a physiological point of view,
the terms mind (soul) and brain  may be used synonymously.  But it
appears to us a matter too much involving the reality, or otherwise, of
our hopes of immortality, not to compel the entering of our formal pro-
test against the doctrine.   The brain, we know, is material; the mind
is,  we conceive, immaterial.  Yet, as we know, and can know, nothing
abstractly of mind apart from its manifestations through its material
organ, it is convenient occasionally to  use these as convertible terms,
especially when concerned with laws  of action, which appear to  be
connected with, if not dependent upon, material changes.  Yet, no-
thing  can be  more certain than this,  that however dependent mind
may be for its manifestations upon a material organ, it is essentially
different in  its nature.   Were  there no presumptive evidence of this
from the phenomena of memory, imagination, etc., it would be supplied
by the frequent instances of the persistent  integrity of the mind amid
the utter  decay of the bodily organs."  " My friends," said Anquetil,
when his  approaching death was announced to him by his physicians,
" you behold a man dying, full of life."  On this expression M. Lordet
quotes Dr. Elam's remark : " It is, indeed, an evidence of the duplicity
of the dynamism in  one and the same individual; a proof of the union
of  two active causes simultaneously created, hitherto inseparable, and
the survivor of which is the biographer of the other."
  What the physicist or philosopher may say is ever to be received in
comparison with other things. The man who reads extensively, or thinks
much, will always feel his fallibility, and be prepared with self-excuse
in denying himself.  " In a living life,"  says Mr. George Henry Lewis,
in  his chapter on the Writings of Plato, "a man's opinions undergo
                               8 
ODD  HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
  "In pure light," says Hegel, "that is, light without
color or shadow, we  should be totally unable to see
anything.  Absolute clearness is therefore identical with
absolute obscurity,—with its negation, in  fact;  but
neither clearness nor obscurity is complete alone.  By
uniting them we  have clearness  mingled with obscu
rity; that is to say, we have light, properly so called."
  Suggestive is this, at least.
  Scientific men are always suggestive, or, if not this,
at least through  them  comes  the unearthing  of the
truths of life.  To appreciate what these have done is
only to reflect upon all things which man recognizes as
good, and if to  best  know  one is to know  his work,
then has the  scientist shown the  people more of God
than has even the theologian.
  The scientist stands to the theologian (as will be seen,
I conceive, when the former is properly known by the
latter) as English intelligence and light has recognized
in the healing art, the relationship of a specialist to a
general  practitioner.  In America,  for example, the
common practitioner is expected to be competent to
every emergency, and whether a  patient should have
fractured a rib, injured an eye, or been attacked by a
passing epidemic, the one mind is the  common direc-
tory.   In England, on the contrary, certain individuals
concentrate the strength and force of lifetime observa-
tions  in special  investigations, and because of such
concentration,  become  proficients.   When, on  any

many modifications." Plato found himself compelled  to contradict
himself continually.  " Plato," says Cicero, " would affirm nothing, but
after producing many arguments and examining a question on every
side, would leave it undetermined." 
TO-DA Y.
"5
point,  obscurity exists, one of these scientists, whose
forte may be the point under dispute, is called  to shed
his  light upon it;  and thus the dark place becomes
illumined, and is safely passed over.   In this country,
the  people know very little about such a good, and so
by not knowing of the light, they are too frequently
mired.

  Aside from science,  is other light to-day  shining?
  Under the pall of war, entirely concealed from many
eyes, lies  the most heavenly of God's gifts to earth,—
peace.  When this  pall shall be torn,  how shall  all
peoplcrejoice in the light which is yet so dim!
  How black must be the darkness of that  man who is
not prepared to give his blessing and his word of cheer
to the peace apostles!  To utter my own sense of this
movement I have no sufficient words.   It is a breaking
light which  has only so far risen as  to  touch a peak
here and there of the high  spots of human  nature,
but it  is a light which shall follow the sun, and every
dark nature, and every dark place, shall be warmed and
freshened by the  glorious rays.   Soon, very  soon, I
trust, will the display and ostentation of war stand forth
in its proper apparel;  then shall  reputation no longer
be  associated with rapine and  cruelty,  but men will
open  their hearts in a sudden wonder  that  not before
should they have seen  that the difference between mili-
tary fame and all that is best to  be avoided was not  in
fact but in estimation.  No one may doubt but in that
profession are  to be found  men  of unexceptionable
character.   But one  may wonder at  it,—wonder,  as
much  as one finds himself surprised at the association 
ll6       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
of the notoriously incompetent with the grand  profes-
sion of politics.  It will be a happy day for the world
when the learned and nobly-inclined  gentlemen in the
one profession, shall  displace the many unlearned and
ignoble disgracing the other.

  The principle of arbitration, another of the humane
characteristics  of the Society of Friends,  exhibits in
itself the advance ground occupied by this people.  Who
ever saw two true Quakers contend in a court of law ?
Who has seen a real Friend take up the sword ?*  Think,
for a moment, what the  result would be, if all people
were governed by these principles;  we will  nqt con-
sider the treasure saved, but we  may ponder over the
evil avoided and the good secured.
  The  light—the proper  light—I  do  not  believe is,
anywhere upon this earth,  to be more fully seen  than in
the  living  of  Friends.   I write this, having  myself
searched  for it  in  many places, and  having  seen and
known  every class and condition of society.  There is
never, among this people, want, for there is always fru-
gality ;  there is never contention,  for  there  is always
agreement; there is never unrest,  for  there  is always
quiet.
  But it  is answered, that with this people is diversity
of doctrine.
  * It was greatly to the loss of the influence of the Society of Friends
that, during the late war, so many of its young people, uninfluenced by
the charges  and warnings of their elders, forgot the principles they
served and impiously took upon their weak selves the work which, in
its own right time, would have been wrought to its proper end. This,
I trust, all now see. 
TO-DA Y.
117
   This I said one day to my daughter, whom, of all
 things, I  most desire to see grow into the dignity and
 simplicity of a Quaker maiden :
   Friends, my daughter,  I  said, are  thinking people,
 and being of wide reading  and contemplative habits,
 much  free discussion necessarily exists amongst them.
 It is with Friends as with  other people, perfect knowl-
 edge and  judgment do not exist with them; conse-
 quently in their meetings much may be  heard that  is
 not food  for all to whom the hearing comes ; but this
 argues not that what is given is not food,  no more than
 would it be just to say of meat that it  is not  food when
 offered to an infant.   In a Friends' meeting are  large
 numbers  to feed,  and of  that which  is set  before the
 many, the wise man  or woman takes what  he or she
 finds subservient to nutrition, and takes nothing more.
 In  this, in which  the Society is educated, it derives its
 analogy from  the physical body.  The body of a man
 is made up of various members,—bones, muscles, nerves,
 arteries, veins, lymphatics, and a hundred other parts.
 Poured upon these members in bulk, as we might ex-
 press ourselves, is blood, the fluid holding the pabulum
 for all of them ; that which is life to the one  part is not
 nutrition to the other,—indeed, is positive poison.  But
 the bone takes not the pabulum of the muscle, nor the
 muscle the food of the bone, but each  takes that which
 meets its own requirements, and lets go  by it without
 concern that which is foreign to its nature.  So, when
 in Friends' meeting diverse doctrines are  preached,
 the simple or the learned, the  Spiritualist or the Ma-
 terialist,  the  Trinitarian  or  Unitarian  takes  of that
which feeds him,—and takes of that alone. 
Il8      ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

  "Image and sign are not the essence."  God is God,
and beside Him there is none other; from Ilim all things
emanate, towards Him all things gravitate. God is God.

  The world, happily, has  never  been without "the
light."   On some—on many—altars it is always kept
beacon bright;  grand men have lived, and  grand men
will, no doubt,  live, who,  "minding the  light," shine
out as examples to their fellow-men.   Poor and rich,
high  and low,  learned  and unlearned, Christian and
heathen,—who  mind the  light,  profit alike from it.
Never was a man so atheistical that he might not recog-
nize the flame, never a man  so much a doubter that he
felt not truth.
  " With me," says Socrates, "has always been a guide
which has  not  failed to direct me, even in the most
simple of my outgoings and incomings.  To-day, when
I left my house to come into this court which has con-
demned me to my  death, it warned me not  against the
coming: thus may I be sure that my dying  shall profit
more than my living."  The familiar spirit  of Socrates
was  relied  on  ever as the  director  of his actions.
" Give thy son no teacher," spoke the oracle to Sophro-
niscus, the  father of the philosopher, "for  within him
is a voice better than a thousand instructors."
  Pascal, with his  amulet, is only perhaps an example
of a nature in which the flame of the inner light burned
with extraordinary brightness.  Certain it is that from
the hour of his greatest spiritual exaltation on a Novem-
ber night in 1654,  he ever after manifested  no interest
in earthly affairs, save to endeavor to cast  his light
along the pathway  of  his  fellow-men, and to live in
what he deemed the true life. 
LIVING.
      AFTER  all, the odd hours of a man's life consti-
       tute his true life; out of harness and out of the
 shop, back he goes at once to the rut of his wander-
 ings and his thinkings; and if you would  see him as he
 is, in truth and nature, it is in .the rut you are to seek
 him.
   A grave man playing  at skittles, and a learned man
 at leap-frog, are anything but  sorry  sights.   A sorry
 sight, however, it is when the rut gets never into the
 sunshine.  " Out  to grass," as Kaye has  it, is a happy
 leading of the rut.  Donald Mitchell is  to me an in-
 viting ray, as,  with Ik Marvel, he crosses his legs and
 dreams his dreams before his crackling wood-fire;  and
 Horace Greeley, as he discourses  about the things of
 the  field, and  gets out  of Printing-House Square, is
 made the  fuller man that it is seen he is  more  than a
 politician.  Beecher, counting the bushels of his corn- -
 crop, or with wide-soled boots hoeing potatoes, is not
 less  the man that one desires to  know than when, in
 Plymouth Chapel, he  pours  out  the  libations  of  his
 bright thoughts. Out of harness is glorious, for whether
 one dreams dreams stretched  full length in some shady
 seacoast  spot,  or  dreams  his dreams in  the  library
 arm-chair,  the  relief  amounts to  the same sense of
exhilaration.
  We have discoursed somewhat of the thoughts of the
                                      (H9) 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
age.  We will not belie the intentions of our book, of
the odd thoughts of our odd hours, if we spend a re-
flection upon a fault of the age—overworking.
   "It is a blessed thought all through the long work-
day months of the early  part of the  year," says  the
author of " Essays of an Optimist," " that, if we only
live long enough, we must drift into August.  For with
August comes the holiday. There is a lull in the mighty
clatter of the machinery of life ; the  great wheels  are
still, or they gyrate slowly and noiselessly.   How it
happens it is hard to say (and the harder the more you
think about  it, for man's wants and  man's passions,
which make  work, are  never still), but the  autumnal
sabbath comes round as surely as the  shorter days and
the yellower leaves ;  and from the great heart of the
metropolis we  go in search of  a  cheerier life and a
fresher atmosphere."
   There seems  simply no need of so much production
as men are making.  A man works as  if he worked  for
many others, and not at all for himself.   This is the
explanation  of the absence of all but the  autumnal
holiday : " Luxuries accumulate and men decay."  The
need of the much arises from the artificiality of living,
and the much  engenders  and breeds the unsatisfiable.
"Appetite," says Seneca, "hath revolted from  nature,
which continually inciteth itself, and increases with the
ages, helping vice by wit.   First it  began  to desire
superfluous, then  contrary, things; last of all,  it sold
the mind to the body, and commanded it to serve the
lusts thereof.   All the arts wherewith  the city  is con-
tinually set at work, and maketh such a stir, do center
in the affairs of  the  body, to which  all things  were 
LIVING.
121
once  performed as to a servant, but now are provided
as for a lord."
   An honest old German, smoking his pipe upon his
stoop, thus discoursed to one who asked him of the
rich men of his neighborhood :  " That is our wealth-
iest man," said he, pointing to one who  lived least
imposing of his neighbors ; " he is worth ten thousand
dollars ;  all the others have more than a hundred thou-
sand."   Upon surprise being expressed that a man of
ten thousand was richer than  he who  multiplies him
ten times, "In  this country," he said, "a man with
ten thousand dollars has all that his  true  necessities
demand: the remainder of  his possessions, whatever
they may be, are not of real use, so all over ten thou-
sand  only tend  to fret him and  cause  him anxiety."
It must  be, then, that, as the  object of  wealth is to
make one's self comfortable, the man of fewest cares is
the richest.   We will say, at  least in the abstract, this
discourser was a philosopher.
   "It is the property of God to need nothing," said
Socrates, "and they that need, and are contented with
least,  come nearest  to God."  Antisthenes, the Athe-
nian,  the founder  of the sect called  Cynics, said,
'' Those who have once learned the way to temperance
and virtue, let  them not addict themselves again  to
corporeal delicacies  and false wants, for these dull the
mind  and divert and hinder from noble living."  " You
see,"  said Xenocrates, as he  treated the  ambassadors
of Alexander with the temperate and spare things of
his table, " I have no need for your master's bounty
that I am so well  pleased with  this."   Artaxerxes
Mnemon was reduced on one occasion to dine on bar- 
ODD HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN.
 ley-bread  and  dried  figs, and drink  water:  "What
 pleasure," said he,  "have I lost  till now, through my
 delicacies  and excesses!"
   Goldsmith — poor Goldsmith!—was not a  philoso-
 pher, but  he felt  out truths, and saw not unfrequently
 farther than many who  laughed  at his  follies.   In his
 Deserted Village, he  has not uttered  the least  of his
 wisdom :

        " 111 fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
          Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
          A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
          When every rood of ground maintained its man.
          For  him light labor spread her wholesome store;
          Just gave what life required, but gave no more;
          His  best companions, innocence and health;
          And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.
          . . . But times are altered ; trade's unfeeling train
          Usurps the land, and dispossess the swain.
          Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose,
          Unwieldy wealth and cumb'rous pomp repose,
          And every want to luxury allied,
          And every pang that folly pays to pride.
          Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
          Those calm  desires that asked but little room,
          Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,
          Lived in each nook, and brightened all the green,—
         These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,
         And  rural mirth and manners are no more."

   Did  ever a busy man take a holiday and not feel, as
he joyed in  the  fresh  life, that there was a something
wrong  in his ordinary living?  What is the use in the
money, or  the  production, if both be but an excess of
store to lay by ?  Does the active man of Third Street or
Wall Street tell me that excitement  is  the pleasure of 
LIVING.
123
life ?  Well, because I know that to him it is most apt
to become so, I give him my warmest pity.  We prosti-
tute our lives, we shut ourselves up in counting-houses,
and amid the smoke of our cigars, and our  talk, and
our exchanging, we let days slip by, one after the other
going, until it is read in some morning newspaper that
all of them are gone, and we with them.
   "Have you ever," asks Zschokke,  "passed a fine
spring morning alone amid the new-born beauties of
nature? when, at such a time, you have been roving in
the shade of peaceful groves, through the green canopy
of which  the  rosy waves of sunlight broke, when  the
soft breath of morn was  wafted  across  the verdant
landscape, and the numberless  flowerets shivered, and
the dew on the leaflets glittered in the tears  of joy which
heaven  had shed at the holiness and goodness  of the
Creator;  and the cascade  leaping  from the rock, and
the river in its bed, and the forest on the hill, sent forth
solemn murmurs, while high up above, and deep down
below, the air resounded with the wonderful song of
birds, and the buzzing of insects.  Oh, what were your
feelings ?  Did not a sense of inexpressible delight flash
through your  bosom ?  You drew a deep breath, your
body seemed etherealized, you felt  as if you must  join
your voice to the voices of the air, as if you must mix
your tears with the tears of heaven, you longed for the
wings of rosy morn to soar up high into the empyrean,
or to sink into the green depths of the forests, or to lose
yourself in the blue haze that veiled the unknown dis-
tance.  You longed  to  pour your love through the
entire world."
  A man  who buys  a country-place, even  should  he 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
move back to the city in a single year, will have learned
a  lesson which  must modify all the  remainder  of his
life.  Two years in the country everybody should live;
until a man does this, there will be a something import-
ant unknown to him.
   Last year, with a labor that was only delight, I had
for my table all the luxuries, yes,  truly luxuries, for
nature is  lovingly responsive.  The price of butter I
pondered not upon, for  a white heifer, which was the
play-pet of my children, gave me  all I wanted for the
asking.   Eggs,  in  abundance, were  gotten by a walk
of interest to the hennery; and milk, rich and creamy,
was the wine of the feast.
   As, following my horse, I pushed through  the corn-
blades, scattering the jewels of the fresh morning, I said
to myself, How grand  a thing is it to  be a part of
creation !   First, the wavy,  silver-fringed corn  givefl
me all the interest and vigorous living that comes from
being with it and  attending  to its growth ;  leaf by
leaf it grows into beauty  and delight for me; then,
grain  after grain, ear after ear, come the ripe shocks,
and  I may watch the  development, and joy in the
changes, and count the wealth.  Then, in  turn, I fodder
and grain my heifer, and scatter over the barn-floor the
corn of which I have such plenty for my wants.  No
greater  miracle do  I need, I think, to prove God all-
mighty  than  that I see  my corn  changed into other
forms of  good ; and so I watch  the nature which I
feel to be my brother and my minister, and stand in
delighted  awe as I see demonstrated that  true life is not
one of  unceasing,  uncompensating toil, but that to
live, as  God  placed  a  man, is to  be in  Eden indeed, 
                        LIVING.                  I25

  and I may not but query if the serpent that turned man
  fiom the garden be not of himself.
    Living is a sacrifice, because that men prefer sacrifice
  to praise; or rather it is, that a man will  not join in the
  paeans of nature.   You may not answer  me  that the
  shop of the  glass-blower, with  its gases and  its con-
  gested lungs and hollow eyes, is a necessity.  Marcus
  Antoninus was  a very wise man, and he would have
  deemed  you the poorer, "that  you stood  in  need of
  another, and had not in yourself all things needful for
  life."   Hippias, the philosopher, taught, from  the full-
  ness of his experience,  "that a  better life than Alex-
  ander's was it to be the provider of our own necessities,
  to make one's own buskins."  A good brother of my
 own has on his place a shop that one might find it hard
 to designate;  he is wheelwright, blacksmith, carpenter,
 tinker, gentleman, and as he walks over the broad acres,
 which his father before him tilled and beautified, he is
 a very lord, and seems to be a possessor  of  all  needed
 things.
   Tinkering is extensibility ; a man is never a full man
 until he gives way to his nature, and tinkers.  Granted
 that  in  society, in the artificial life of  the  world,
 special  workers are  the most useful citizens;  not,  how-
 ever, are  they useful to their own individualities,—this
 a specialist must be satisfied  to  sink; he is the  rivet
alluded to in another reflection,—a reflection which
thought not of man apart from his fellows.   Last week
I dug, fitted, and laid a drain ; already is the muck spot
covering itself with a green carpet, and already have I
had a week's  holiday in  the pleasure of criticising the
job.   Tinkering is playing,— suppporting one's self is 
 126      ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

 playing, provided always, that tinkering and the sup-
 porting are not pushed to the point of work,—and work
 is unnecessary;  for the exercise which a man has when
 he finds himself as nature will allow him to exist in all
 comfort and happiness, is not work;  it is luxury.
   "All nonsense this," says the man who esteems him-
 self practical.  Well, my friend, it may be that I know
 more about the matter than even you do.   I certainly
 do know what it is to have a family, and  what it is to
 support  it, too; what it  is to work, as men call labor,
 and what it  is to  play.  And after forty years of life
 experience, spent between country and city, I am ready
 to affirm, as the result of my observations, that man de-
 parts from the real  pleasure of living as he  sunders
 himself from simplicity and nature; that excess is not
 luxury,  nor overfullness  satisfaction.   A walk through
 a garden  is more instructive and  suggestive than is an
 evening  in the theater, the  gold  and silver of a sunset
 is  richer than a bank, the  chirping of the chick that
 pecks its shell is more musical than the zither, the free
 song of a bird is not a poorer concert than one of NTls-
 son's, which latter we may not hear without the excess
 of work which has tired  and  exhausted us to procure
 the five dollars for her ticket.  Neither,  my practical
 friend, is "five acres enough" a metaphor;  what  a
 practical man like  you could do with five acres is just
 now, perhaps, beyond your  imagination.  If you have
 not more than five children, you could keep, not starve,
 your family upon five acres.
  Nonsense it may be, however, to talk or write about
simplicity; this is one thing  that a common experience
acknowledges and recognizes the virtue of, and yet man 
LIVING.
127
 will never live in it to-day, but always,—let him tell the
 tale, proposes to come to it to-morrow.  It is with ac-
 cumulation  as with  the glamour  of  the will-o'-the-
 wisp, a man will follow, follow, until he  is up  to his
 neck in the mire,  and inextricable.
   Nonsense it truly is to accept the judgment  of the
 short-sighted, which  esteems wealth,  alone,  success.
 The most unsuccessful men  in the world have been the
 richest.   Can an  intelligent human being imagine  a
 more pitiable sight than a man at the end of the  course
 with nothing to  show  but a  plethoric  bank  book?
 Come to know men, and one is not long in finding out
 that among the  richest are  to be found the shallowest
 and the wretchedest.   If a man may look at the matter
 broadly enough, he will see  that a mighty hoard of gold
 is intrinsically no more to the real life than was the
 glittering spangles of sulphide of iron which the adven-
 turer sacrificed his life in defending from other adven-
 turers, alike with himself ignorant and avaricious.
   In truth, and in the highest sense of competency, a
 man needs  that only which supplies  his  wants,  and
 wants are those things which may not be set apart from
 natural living; two years in the country will show a
 man the beautiful and  accurate system of supply to
 meet wants.  The field is full and the granary is empty,
 the granary is full and the field is empty.   The berries
and fruit which grew upon the hillside this year will be
there the next.   Cattle which lowed in  the valleys,  and
fish which swam  in the  streams, although eaten  this
year, will resurrect themselves, and be in place  the
next summer.  It has been thus from the beginning;  it
will, quite as likely, be so to the very end.  Why, then, 
128       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

accumulate the fruit to rot, or why salt down cattle and
fish,  denying one's self meat in its freshness?
  I do  not want  to  be esteemed Utopian; yet when-
ever  I see a poor man toiling and moiling and sweating
in the sultry city street, to  go at evening to  a home that
is an airless  room in  some by-*place court, I wonder
why  he neglects  the  cool retreat by the  side of the
valley-stream that waits him  in its solitude.   How  is
he going,  you ask, when he  has not an  over dollar
to bless himself?  Well, my  friend,  read Thoreau's
Walden.  But Thoreau was an enthusiastic semi-Uto-
pian fool, you answer, and his little house by the  Wal-
den  pond, and the fifteen dollars  a  year which  he
seemed to be able to make with so little  exertion, and
which supplied his wants,  could hardly answer for any-
body save a  skewer-making  Yankee.   Not  so  fast.
Thoreau was, in one  sense at least, truly great:  he
got above the vanities; he enjoyed the fish  taken in the
fresh morning from  his pond not less  that he handled
it  not first on the market-stall, and  he enjoyed the
beautiful  scenery surrounding him  not less  that  he
did  not view it  from  the rapid-driven car, or gaze
upon it from  the excursion-deck  of  a flag-trimmed
steamer;  few men ever lessened their cares more than
did  Thoreau, and  few men  have been possessed  of
truer wealth than the  resident of the pond.  Read,
my  friend, read  Thoreau's Walden, and  recommend
it to your poor  neighbor who  does  not know how
to manage, and  if, further,  you choose to give him
this  little book also, which will not be ungratifying to
the author, and equally pleasing, no doubt, to the pub-
Msher  who sells it, tell him  for  the writer,  or rather 
LIVING.
129
let him read it for himself, that  "Odd Hours" often
compares two hundred and fifty dollars once made and
spent in simple country living with quite six thousand
now consumed  in  the artificialities of the town, and
much doubts if the richer hours were not the former.
  An ass would go back, you suggest, to the best pasture.
  But he does  not  always; it may be hard  to explain
it, but he does not.  Yet, I am going—to-morrow.
  He has a country-seat now, and his corn-blades, and
heifers, and chickens are  poetically cultivated, and he
forgets the mid-day heat of the corn-rows of the little
farm.  This you are thinking.  But  you think wrong,
even although I have the country-seat.  The  site of a
cottager's house may have a grander  outlook  than the
mansion, and the owner of the mansion may appreciate
the site of the cottage without an ability to come to its
possession.
         " God made the country, man made the town."

   Simplicity and economy of living, and, consequently,
economy in working, may not  be  arrived at  in the
town as out of the  town.   Most  especially is  this true
of a great  city; the whole thing is different, entirely
different.   A single sufficient illustration may  be found
in barefooted children.  In the  country, a bare foot,
covered with sand  and  brown with sunshine, ready
always  on  a  summer's day  for  a  wade  through any
rippling streamlet, is the very glory and joy of a child.
In  town, an undressed foot, and poverty, and  loss of
respectability, are synonyms.   And it is alike through
all things.   I have a tenant whose cottage porch is em-
 bowered in masses  of honeysuckle; it  cost  him just
                          9 
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
five minutes' work to plant the vine, and  now it gives
every day to his wife and children the pleasure of trail-
ing its new sprays, inhaling its fresh odors, and watch-
ing the humming-birds as they come  and go in their
gladness.  A month ago I wanted a shade for a single
window of a  town - house, and the bill of the uphol-
sterer was twenty dollars; neither did he give with the
service the pleasure of the trailing sprays, nor the odors
of  fragrant  smells,—he  gave a fancy awning,  which
tenant and owner fear will be blown to shreds by the
first heavy gust.
  Furniture, eminently respectable and satisfactory in
the country,  becomes  instantly shabby when brought
into the city.   A house in the country in keeping with
all  its  surroundings,  and thereby fully satisfactory,
would find itself  quickly enough pushed into the back
street should it chance to visit  the town.  A curtain
of trailing Wisteria is a hanging for a country window
that Schwemmer cannot  equal, and it costs  nothing.
Yet, in  town, I must pay this artist a  hundred dollars
for one of his laces, and after  it is hung, I may not
allow my children to touch even one of its dead flowers,
although from  the  curtain of their country window—
so much prettier—they pull and tear as they please, and
nature, like an over-indulgent grandmother, puts  all
back again.
  In  the country, I may  throw out overnight my lay-
fishline  of a hundred  hooks; in the morning I have
a breakfast which has cost me nothing but recreation.
When in town, it always costs a dollar for a fish-break-
fast, and certainly not a particle of fun with it,—except,
indeed,  it may be esteemed amusement to higgle with 
LIVING.
I3I
a huckster, who insists on charging thirty cents for what
fairly should be sold for ten.
  Country bathing is a costless enjoyment:  the dresses
need not  to be  particularly fanciful, and the bathing
hour, under the willows, is when you will;  no hotel to
return to,  steaming with its sun-dried rooms, and a bill
at  the  end of  the hot term which makes paterfami-
lias groan; but the laughings, and  the  plashings, and
the cheering of artless, non-contaminated children re-
place the annoyances of hotel inconveniences, and, an
important matter for the poor man, take the  place of the
annihilating bill.  The father is not made hay of by
virtue of his being grass, but without such conversion
has hay in plenty.
  "Blackberries!" screams the hawker, as he passes
the door of the drayman in the  little street; and the
children run out, begging for that they may not have.
The children of the man who has the little place around
the hill, come home, even before breakfast is prepared,
their baskets  running  over  in  fullness : and so  fresh
withal,  children and berries, that the carter and the
huckster of the little street might well despair.
  The poor man who struggles and complains in the tur-
moils of a city is not unlike a  man who might move just
as  far away as possible from  water, and then murmur
that he should  not have wherewith to  quench thirst.
Nature cannot grow dates from earth buried in  flag-
covered streets, neither is it her fault that the culverted,
offal-impregnated stream invites not to the refreshment
of the bath.  If man would profit from his kinship with
Nature he  must go  to her, not fly her.
  Are you saying that this is all fine enough for the sum- 
ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
 mer-time ?  Well, how about the cozy hours around the
 nut, and cider, and.apple-covered table?  How about
 the crackling wood fire, with its warmth, or its dreams,
 or both, as you desire?  How about the  hilltop and the
 sled for the children, or, if you please  to indulge them,
 the skates and  the glassy pond ?   How  about the long
 evenings with books and meditation ?

         " O winter, ruler of the inverted year,
          Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled,
          The breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks
          Fringed with a beard made white with other snows
          Than those of age, thy forehead wrapt in clouds,
          A leafless branch thy scepter, and thy throne
          A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
          But urged by storms along its slippery way,
          I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,
          And dreaded as thou art.  Thou holdest the sun
          A prisoner in the yet undawning east,
          Shortening his journey between morn and noon,
          And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,
          Down to the rosy west; but kindly still
          Compensating his loss with added hours
          Of social intercourse and  instructive ease,
          And gathering, at short notice, in one group
          The family dispersed, and fixing thought,
          Not less  dispersed by daylight and its cares.
          I crown thee king of intimate delights,
          Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness."

   You are  not, perhaps, prepared to consider comfort
as combined with country.   This may be for a twofold
reason :   You may think  it would not be  possible  for
you to  leave the town, or  may feel  that you  would
not  be  willing  to leave  it.   How,  then,  as  you are,
will you get the most  out of your life?   To start with,
we may  affirm  you will  not  get it  by  overworking. 
LIVING.
*33
But may an employee, the artisan, the  laboring man,
regulate the hours of his toil ?  No ; with all the trades
unions and' protection  societies he may get  up,  cir-
cumstances  will control  him.  A slave is a slave,
and society  is a hard taskmaster.   So long  as it  may
it will grind  all the work possible out of you,  and
never  give  more  back than  it can  possibly avoid ;
if you prefer  slavery to freedom, you cannot  be  your
own master, and, slavelike, you may only  save your-
self, as far as I can  see, by shirking.  I am not at all
forgetting that in  another essay in this  book has  been
enjoined  sticking  and working  in  the  fullness of the
situation in  which  one finds himself; but it has as well
been shown  that laws are as changeable as circumstances,
and that what is the duty of one place is not the duty
of another.   A man, however, is not to be advised to
shirk anywhere; this would be  a  meanness below his
nature.
  But  the slavery of the world is not by any  means the
singular associate  of poverty.   Lord Brougham, it is
related, worked  all the  time, allowing himself no re-
laxation,  and begrudging the hours necessary to a
semi-recuperation.    On one occasion, it  is said, that
without sleep  he  labored  six continuous days;  then
rushing down into the country, slept all Saturday night,
all day Sunday, and all Sunday night, hurrying back to
London on Monday  morning to commence  the labors
of a week  as severe.
  Work is a matter  of  comparison.  "It would  take
nine men of my degenerate day," said Homer,  "to lift
a stone thrown by  a single warrior of the heroic ages."
Galen wrote three hundred volumes, and yet wore to a 
ODD HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN.
century.  Varro wrote five hundred, and lived to ninety.
Dickens, our own  illustrious, did  much,  very much
work, but played ever in proportion.   A banker of our
country, whose fame is world-wide, told  me  once, in
the course  of conversation,  "that  he worked seven
hours, slept  eight,  and played  the  balance of the
twenty - four.   Kirke White  overworked himself at
twenty-one.  Dr.  Johnson composed  his  " Diction-
ary" in seven years, and during this time found, what
was play to him, sufficient leisure to write  "The Vanity
of Human Wishes," "Irene," and "The Rambler;" he
lasted to seventy-five.  Dio Lewis  may lift his thousand
pounds, but his aunt's son,  if one there be,  might rup-
ture a pulmonic vessel at three hundred.  To accomplish
much one must rest ever in proportion to his require-
ments.  The Germans,  as a people, physically, and cer-
tainly  intellectually, are superior, but they are  great
resters.  A Teuton, with  his mug of  beer  and  his
meerschaum, is an object of content to look at.
   Rest may not be implied, however,  to be - either
gymnastics or meditation ; it is to one what  most re-
freshes him.  The man who sits  much, finds his recu-
peration in running.  He who thinks may chop wood,
and, with  his children, laugh at  the  flying splinters.
The  broker may close  his books, shut  out  from his
mind his cent,  per  cent., and gallop through the park
on his horse, or sail over the  river in  his yacht.   The
doctor, tired from  his round of visits, may, in an
easy-chair,  dream  dreams,  or do, to amuse himself,
what I am  this moment doing,—write down  thoughts
as they come to him : the writing will rest him, and he
is  not compelled to run into print,  or  if, to please 
LIVING.
135
 others, he does so, people need not buy the thoughts
 if they do not want them.   As far as  the risk of the
 publisher is  concerned, no  author need ever trouble
 himself  to  consider  that matter;  the publisher  be-
 longs to a fraternity that  is amply able to take care of
 itself.
   To live long, is to live comfortably, and to live com-
 fortably is, as implied, to save one's self.  Kirke White
 was born weak  and  fragile, "unfit," as his friends
 said, "for any active  occupation."  Then,  again, his
 temperament  was decidedly  nervous,—nerve all over.
 What else but death at twenty-one was to be expected
 of a brain that the exertion  of a poem compelled  the
 toning down  with wet  towels?   It was, in this case,
 simply an instance of a soul too big for its house, and so
 the joists gave way and  the walls bulged out.   Neander
 is another instance.   "He would lay all day upon the
 floor among his  books," says Dr.  Elam, "absorbing
 recondite matter, till the stupor of repletion came over
 him, forgetful of time and place,  not knowing where he
 was, on  the earth or in the moon,  led like a child by
 his sister to his lecture-room when the lecture hour came,
 and  led  away home again when it  was over."  Like
 the adipose tissue, which, in a sick man, is eaten up by
 his necessities, so in  a case  like this  of the German
 student,  a man's  self becomes consumed from  lack of
 nourishment.  Yet,  Neander  had a frame that lasted to
seventy-two ;  it was simply wonderful.
   Study  is not a provocative  of decay,—quite the con-
trary ;  all statistics exhibit its relationship to longevity.
Reflection induces calm, and calm is rest, and rest,
proper rest, is health.   Philosophy is  the elixir vitae. 
ij6
ODD  HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
In "Body and Mind," in  the "Problems of a Physi-
cian," much interesting matter bearing on this subject
is  reviewed.  Epimenides, the seventh of the  "wise
men," is instanced  as having attained to the age of  a
hundred and fifty-four.* Herodicus, the master of Hip-
pocrates, lived to the age of one hundred.  Democritus,
who was so devoted  to study and  meditation as to put
out  his eyes,  "that," as  he said, "external  objects
might not distract  his  attention,"  lived one hundred
and  nine years.  Juvenal lived to eighty-two.  Pythag-
oras and Quintilian  each to eighty.  Socrates, in full
health, drank the poison cup at seventy-two.
   The age  to which easy men live may better be in-
ferred from the  tables  of  Dr. Madden,  author of the
" Infirmities of Genius:"
  Twenty natural philosophers
  Twenty moral philosophers
  Twenty sculptors and painters .
  Twenty authors on law, etc.
  Twenty medical authors  ....
  Twenty authors on revealed religion
  Twenty philologists.....
  Twenty musical composers
  Twenty novelists and miscellaneous authors
  Twenty dramatists  .....
  Twenty authors on natural religion
  Twenty poets......

  The more time a man takes from the simple wear and
tear of life, the more  years does he live, if not always
Aggregate	
years.	Average.
I5°4	75
1417	70
I412	70
1394	69
1368	68
I3SO	67
1323	66
1284	64
1257	62i
124S	62
124S	62
1144	57
, * Lempriere says two hundred and eighty-nine. 
LIVING.
137
 counted in days, always in the truest meaning of the
 term; man lives in proportion as  he takes in of life,
 and not as he frets,  and fumes, and worries with his
 fellows about things  which,  sooner or  later, must  be
 seen to be of no earthly account, or heavenly, either,
 as for  the matter of that.   "We are often astounded,"
 says good Mr. Kaye,  "by the ambition of youth ;  but
 we ought not to be offended  by it.   It is sure to bring
 its  own  punishment.   To  sow in vanity is to reap  in
 mortification.  We learn in time how little we can ever
 know, and how ridiculous we make ourselves by pre-
 tending to know everything.  When a man has learnt to
 say, ' I am as ignorant as a child on this or that sub-
 ject,'  or 'as powerless as a baby  to do this or that
 thing,' he has mastered one of the great difficulties of
 life,—he has entered  upon a new stage of his career.
 If,  however,  he  says  it boastingly,  scornfully, he is  a
 greater fool than if he pretended to know, and to be
 able to  do,  everything.  To affect  to  consider  the
 knowledge or the  power which one has not attained,
 not worth possessing, is simply to write one's self an
 ass.  There is  no need, on  the other hand, of any
 great parade of humility.  You are a man.   Be thank-
 ful  for it.  It is no humiliation that you are not a god.
 If your neighbor knows what you do not  know, and can
 do  what you cannot do, the chances are  that you know
 and can do some things which are out of the circle of
 his  potentiality.  You do not know one star from an-
 other, but you can put the Sakoontala into Greek verse.
 You do not know the principle of the diving-bell, but
you could fortify a  city in accordance with the system
of Cormantagne.'' 
138      ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
  Be  comfortable, then,  in  your work and your pro-
gressions, "and be neither elated because you know so
much, nor depressed because you know so little."
  Coming across the expression of Pascal, that " Man
is necessarily so  much  of a fool, that it would be a
species of folly  not to  be a fool,"  our Optimist de-
clares that it made him happy for a time, almost beyond
precedent.  " Make up your mind that you are a fool,"
says he, " and that  it is altogether out of nature not to
be a fool, and a measureless calm descends upon you."
He means, that when you and I have arrived at a com-
prehension  of  the true life,  and still  will  so per-
sistently  avoid  living it, there is to  be  found a con-
solation  in believing that  man's  natural state is that
of a fool.
  A partial remedy, however, against overwork, and
the only one I know anything about as relation is had
with the  artificial life we insist on living, is management
of time.   A man behind with his work is in a sad con-
dition, to say the best  of it.   It is easy to get so far
behind that  one  can never possibly catch up.   A man,
for example, who will not,  in  the vigor of youth, con-
sider rationally the increasing wants which must grow
with a family, gets  behind  terribly; it is a streak of
luck if ever he has his nose elsewhere than at the grind-
stone.  A man gets behind, when, in his living, he for-
gets the homely maxim, that " Every dog has his day."
The successful  man will not be successful  always;  he
has only his day not less surely than the dog.  En-
viron  yourself in  defenses, that when the stronger man
comes along he shall not  push you  wholly over the
wall. 
LIVING.
139
  The time of a man's work is influenced necessarily
by the nature of the  work.  A physician in ordinary
may not say that from 10 to 3 are  his hours; the ring
at his bell would quite as likely be at the a.m. as at the
p.m., but he may grow out of the long hours through a
management which shall convert him, in time, into the
specialist, and the servitude may be fairly passed back
to him who has the  strength  of back  to bear, to be
shifted again in turn as the young back reaches  its age.
An apothecary  must  stick to the  responsibility of his
prescription-counter,  but it is  a weary business to be
forever over disagreeable odors; in time, however, he
may devolve the care, with the experience,  upon his
assistant.   So  a business  man, with his  shops  and
his  foundries,  may also  get out of the round, if  he
manages with care and the proper sense of justice the
power  which he controls.  A lawyer may  graft into
himself the strength of a new shoot, and the branch,
while getting   from  the  stock  its nourishment, may
grow to cover  with  its shade  that which  has nour-
ished it.
  To get work through with in the first hours in which
it may  be done  is always excellent management.  A
man who plays first, and leaves his task till afterwards,
finds the afterwards very uncertain time; the work of
Monday is  apt  to fall over into Tuesday, and  Friday
pushes Saturday  so hard that  the one week  gets, in
spite of himself, into the next, so he  is soon in  a
corner, and, what is worse, is likely to remain there.
  The  laborer,  it has been rather implied, has but little
chance  for rest.  Yet is this in  some respects his own
fault.  It is a poor management that  is not willing to 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
take a  stride of one  or  two miles, even  after a hard
day's work, that the home may be in the suburbs rather
than in  a filthy-smelling court.   May a man recuperate
where scarcely an  unpolluted atom of oxygen  enters
his lungs? or  rest,  where constant disturbances break
his slumbers ?   A man to have his work done in season
must feel able  to his task;  he will get  this ability best
from  pure air  and  comfortable surroundings.  Again,
it happens that  the dram  is not an unknown refresh-
ment with this  class.  Against  the liquor as liquor I
have just here nothing to urge, except that, as a nutri-
tive agent, a pint of  porter is  not equal  to  a pint of
water combined with a cracker; but a pint of porter
taken each day for two weeks costs about one day of toil
to pay for it.  Here, then, is a whole livelong day that
might be saved  for enjoyment with the children in a
stroll through  the  woods, and  which day might  be
turned  to  the  pleasure-getting  account  of itself and
coming  days,  by a bag of chestnuts or  hickory-nuts
gathered and  brought to the drying cupboard.   Doc-
tors' bills  are engendered of noisome  alleys; this  is
another matter that poor management not  unfrequently
compels to many  days of toilsome, wearying  over-
work.    A laboring-man  should always consider this
in with  the rent he is to pay; it will be a most  likely
addition if he selects  the alley.
  Buying in driblets  is  another matter that compels
overworking.   A  ton of  coal which,  in the yards,
would cost four days of work, bought by the bucket in
the shops costs just eight  days;  four days lost, which
a little  management  should  save  to the  laborer for
self-cultivation, and which cultivation might eventually 
LIVING.
141
raise him to some easier position.  The other day I
paid a female servant over a hundred and fifty dollars
which had been  allowed to accumulate  in my hands.
I tried to show this girl how, put at  the  best interest,
this money was equal to  just one month  of rest to her
in every year of  her coming life.  I failed, however,
and by the next Sunday it was  represented in  dresses,
bonnets, etc.   I knew a young professional man who
declared that  his  first week  of holiday  should  come
only with  the  interest-money which should pay for it;
his interest-money now warrants many holidays, and he
takes and enjoys them.  I have always considered this
man sensible in taking the risk of his life  outlasting his
saving days.
   A thousand  dollars in  a savings-bank, or in a mort-
gage, or good  railroad stock, is  a great lightener  of
labor in an artificial-living community ;  it saves the
work of as many days as its interest represents  one's
earnings.  But  the thousand dollars saved need not pri-
marily, under ordinary circumstances, represent as many
hours or days  of overwork.  It must, however, repre-
sent economy.  The young man who denies  himself
the concert or  the excursion until the ticket consumes
not his direct labor, has,  soon enough, both the  ticket
and  the day's work in his pocket.   If a concert costs
a dollar, it will be met by ten or twelve dollars, which
one  may have  put to work for the  purpose.  Or the
summer trip of a week at the seashore will be paid for
every year  by five hundred that shall have been saved
and  put at interest.   The expenditure of interest does
not appear to be felt like other  money, it always seems
to one as if he has had  his vacation for  nothing.   At 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
least it  seems thus  until it ceases to be a matter for
concern one way or another.
  We may conclude our essay, then, by remarking that
if our premises are right, overwork  is to be avoided
first and best, by getting into the ways of simplicity.
Second, by the exercise of a prudent  economy, which
saves before  it spends. 
WISE  AND  OTHERWISE.
       HE was not a true philosopher who stumbled into
        the ditch from having his gaze too intently fixed
 on the stars.  And might it not very well be that poor,
 much-abused Xanthippe was Xanthippe, because Soc-
 rates was  Socrates?   One  certainly  may  not  wonder
 that Gretchen the Sad, as Dame Diedrich, was Gretchen
 the Shrew, as Frau Van Winkle.
   Life circumstances would seem to be pretty much as
 one makes them.  Between Scylla on the right, and
 Charybdis on  the left, runs the channel.  If the rock
 beaches, or the whirlpool engulfs, the  fault will most
 likely be found in our steering ;  fewer wrecks are to be
 attributed to the elements than to navigators.
   Granted that the artificial trammels with  which man,
 in  his relations to society,  has environed  himself are
 necessities, then is he  to recognize that through such
 necessities does he complicate his  life and  living, and
 assume to himself the more to consider and  the more to
 provide for.  A man must breathe the atmosphere with
 which he surrounds himself,  be it of roses or miasm.
  A life, to be a full and proper one, may consider not
 alone to-day, but must always have a future which in-
 vites it.  Passing along the  street, some time ago, my
 attention was attracted to a print  hanging in a shop-
 window, in which was pictured  a  boat,  filled with
 travelers, crossing  a stream.   In the bow was Youth,
all  excitement  and hope,  pointing  forward;  in  the
                                      (M3) 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
stern, Age, weary and dejected, no trust expressed,—no
anticipation.   The artist lacked breadth of conception.
The season of old age has, in God's harmony, no more
of barrenness  in  it than has that of fresh boyhood or
vigorous adult life.  Let things  be  shown as they are,
not as man makes them.   This  picture  has in it, how-
ever, a great life  lesson to every man and woman who
looks upon it,—perhaps the artist meant so to express
himself.   What the engraving is called  I  could  not
read, it  being  far  back  in the window ; but a very good
title would be, "  The Evening of a Purposeless  Day."
  What a vain and foolish thing, when he gets to the
stern, seems the man whose life has been spent in the
service of Mammon for Mammon's self! or even, indeed,
in the very fullness of his life, how unenviable is he,
how wasteful has  been such an existence, how thought-
less  of necessities!—like the butterfly fluttering about
in the sunshine of a summer's day, heeding not that the
wings shall fail in the whirlwind.
  If to-day were even all of life, getting over-riches
would not be wisdom; it is as bad for a man to be too
rich as to be too poor,—bad for himself: the channel is
between.
  Old age is a misnomer.  What is the end of a circle?
or where is the beginning?  "I rejoice," said, on  an
occasion, an astronomer, as he lay on  his death-bed,
" that the call-bell is  ringing for the start.   What a
grand journey  is before me!—the stars, all of them, in
my  way.  I long to be off."  "Let the light enter,"
were the  last words spoken by Goethe as, in his  old
age, he laid down the pen, with which he had been all
day  writing, to follow the messenger into  the wider 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
M5
field  of life.   "Let not  the Persians,"  said  Cyrus,
"lament  at my funeral as if I were really dead; let
them the  rather rejoice that I have passed to a some-
thing higher and better."
   To an  old  man it should  be  precisely as with the
hopeful lad who  anticipates  his first journey.   Why
not?   He ought  really to  feel the greater  satisfaction,
for is he not the farther on ?  When an old man  feels
not this way,  so far as  his own self-life  is concerned,
there has been a mistake in what  he  calls his  life.
"Davie !  Davie !" said Dr. Johnson, as Garrick showed
him all the attractions of  Hampton Court, "these are
the things that make it hard to die."
   A rich man, over-rich, is, through the troubles which
he brings on himself, although few  have  arrived at the
insight which recognizes it, among the most unenviable
of mortals: to his cares he becomes as a servant, and
to his anxieties, as a slave.
   "There is," said Kant, in one of his strictures, "a
considerable difference  between thinking we possess a
hundred dollars,  and possessing  them."   " Daran ist
philosophisch  nichts zu  erkennen," answered Hegel;
and this reply, which is pronounced  delicious by Lewis,
has a world of meaning to  a man  whose possessions are
cheating him out of those joys which are so entirely aside
from  money.   "I have been  living," said Johann
Gottlieb Fichte, "for  the  last four or-five months in
Leipzig,  the happiest life  I can remember.  I came
here with my head full of grand  projects, which all
burst, one after another, like so many  soap-bubbles,
without leaving me so much as the froth.   At first,"
continued he, " this troubled me not a little, and, half in
                        10 
146      ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
despair, I took a step which I ought to have taken long
before.  Since I could not alter what was without me,
I resolved to try and alter what was within.  I  threw
myself into philosophy, and here I found the antidote
for all the evils and cares of life, and joy enough into
the bargain."  The more modern man calls philosophy
reason.
  " What a heaven lives the scholar in," says good old
Bishop Hall, "that  at  once, in one close room, can
daily converse with all the  glorious martyrs and fathers,
that can single out, at pleasure, either sententious Ter-
tullian, or grave Cyprian, or resolute Jerome, or flowing
Chrysostom, or divine Ambrose, or divine Bernard, or,
who alone is all of these,- heavenly Augustine, and talk
with them, and hear their  wise and holy counsels, ver-
dicts,  and resolutions !  Let the world  contemn us;
while we have these delights we cannot envy them, we
cannot wish ourselves other than we are.   Study itself
is our life.  How much sweeter, then, is the fruit of
study, the conscience of  knowledge !  in comparison
whereof the soul that has once tasted  it easily contemns
all human comfort."
  " Go  now, ye worldlings, and insult over our pale-
ness, our neediness, our neglect.  Ye could not be so
jocund if you were not so ignorant. If you did not want
knowledge, you would not overlook  him that hath it.
For me, I am so far from emulating you,  that I profess
I would as lief be a brute beast as'an ignorant rich man."
  But some men cannot help making money, having
money; it is their forte, their genius,  their duty.  They
can, however, help sacrificing to it; this is what is meant.
The richer man may well be the better one, but the 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
147
 man must override the money, and not the money the
 man.  I  always look with  admiration  on a  certain
 friend, the  originator and upholder of a great manu-
 facturing business, who so well comprehends his relation
 to the true life that he ever acts, and seems to feel, as
 the steward of a co-operative company ;  his surround-
 ings are never  less sunshiny than is his own face, and
 this, to everybody, shows the light that is within him.
   One may never, with propriety, be personal;  but,
 needing an  illustration, I may venture to refer to the
 immense  establishment in which this book has been
 made  for the reader,—the  largest, as a traveled friend
 tells me,  in the world.   To go through this house is
 simply to walk amid acres of books.   Here  are offices,
 printing-rooms, sales-rooms, bindery-rooms, packing-
 rooms ; indeed, it impresses one as an easier  task to
 attempt the description of what there  is not  rather
 than of what there is.  Cries of clerks, the screams of
 porters, the  hammering  of the  packers,—these are
 sounds to be heard from morning until night, and, in
 some seasons, from night until morning.  Now, as I go
 into this place, with my own quieter life in the prospect,
 I find continually recurring to me the question of the
 motive.   If to  exercise the great power of such an
 establishment for the  good  and elevation of  humanity,
 by casting far and wide the light of an exalted press, be
 the object, how grand is it to  be the  lever of such a
 force!  If, on the contrary, self actuates and influences,
how might one rejoice that he is not connected with a
place of such unceasing toil and large responsibility!
  As is the mainspring to a watch, so is motive to the
actions of a man.  A watch with a bad  spring must un- 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
duly run down  or run wrong.  A man with a weak or
an ill motive is seen soon enough to be unreliable;  it
is simply out of the nature of both the things to be any-
thing else than wrong, and the face of the one shows
it not less fully than does that of  the other.
  A true motive is like a strong ship:  it bears its pos-
sessor over the waves and through the storms safely and
happily into port; it makes a young man vigorous, and
never lets an old man come to  an end ; it spans the
chasm men insist on calling death, and lands one, with
all his life, on the other side.  A true motive has never
a present, which is its all; from  the start-point it is a
something that lateralizes like the two sides of a base-
less  triangle, growing ever wider  and wider, taking in
as the ability enlarges.  This is that which is the fresh-
ness and fullness of a life when the object is noble;  it
is growth—the eternal progression.
   How becoming is  it in  a young  man to commence
aright, or, if out of the right, to get into it as soon as
possible!  Let the first question always be, " Cui bono?"
What good, To what  end ?  This should be the begin-
ning to everything.   If the end be a country-seat, and
a hundred thousand dollars, or a palace, and a million
of pounds, commence again ; the game is not worth the
chase.  If one in such pursuit does not find that he has
run into a close, it is only because he will have the good
luck to be cut off  on  the way.
  There comes occasionally to see me an old man, who
can view his advancing years only with dissatisfaction,
if not,  indeed, with  absolute horror.  Can anything
be sadder than  this, or more unlike what it should be ?
"O my friends and judges," said Socrates, "if death 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
149
is  a journey to another place, and  there, as men say,
all the dead  are, what good  can be greater  than to
go this journey?  If, indeed, when the pilgrim arrives
in the world below he  finds the  true  judges  who
are said  to give judgment there, Minos, and Rhada-
manthus,  and vEacus,  and  Triptolemus,  and  other
sons of God who were  righteous  in their own  life,
that  pilgrimage will be worth making.   What would
not a man give if  he might converse with Orpheus,
and Musaeus, and Hesiod, and Homer ?   Nay, if this
be true,  let me die again and  again.   I, too,  shall
have a wonderful  interest in a place where I can con-
verse with Palamedes, and Ajax,  the son of Telamon,
and  other heroes of  old, who  have suffered death
through an unjust judgment;  and  there  will be no
small pleasure, I think, in comparing my sufferings with
theirs.  Above all, I shall be able to  continue my search
into true and false knowledge, as  in this world, so also
in that. I shall find out who is wise, and  who pretends
to be wise and is not.  What would not a man give, O
judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great
Trojan expedition,  or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or num-
berless others, men and women, too?  Wherefore, O
judges, be of good  cheer about death, and know this
of a truth, that no  evil  can  happen  to  a good man,
either in  this  life, or after death."
   What a contrast!
   "Briider," sang softly Beethoven, as he was passing
away:
             " Briider, iiber'm Sternenzelt
               Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen."

  I will not try to translate the  sublime  outstretching 
J5°
ODD  HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
and outlooking of these lines ; a hundred times have I
read and re-read them, and always do they bring the
same thrill to my soul-life,—measureless confidence and
measureless immensity.  Grand Beethoven !
  Who,  at the  end of life, might, with  better grace,
write "Laus Deo," than a Haydn? who never  com-
menced a score  but with the words,  " In nomine Do-
mine," or "Soli Deo  gloria."
  It is related that  of  a dinner given by  Lord Boling-
broke, the bill of fare was  shown to  Dean Swift  as an
inducement for that distinguished individual to attend :
"A fig for your bill  of fare!" answered the Dean;
"show me your bill of company."  The fare of life is
little more than the fare of a dinner,—the company is
the thing, the influence exerted and received.
     " Men live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
      In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
      We should count time by heart-throbs.  He most lives
      Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best;
      And he whose heart beats quickest, lives the longest."

  When one  sees  a man of large influence  using his
means for the  common good, he says,  that man has
caught the truth of life.  When, on the contrary, a man
is found  grasping  and avaricious,  exhibiting self at
every point, we  fall into meditation over his folly.   As
one, is he, making  a journey, having no  provision for
a stream which must be passed.  Must not necessarily
such a one, when the  water is reached, exclaim with
the dying  Mazarin, "O my poor soul, what is to be-
come of  thee ?  Whither wilt thou go?"   What a con-
trast to  the trusting,  heroic words of the bishop of
Poictiers!   "Go out,  soul, go  out.   Of what  canst 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
151
thou be afraid ?  Hast thou not studied duty for seventy
years?"
  A proper beginning considers  always  the whole  of
a ground to be passed over; with  Epicurus, it is to
recognize that  true happiness is  that which considers
the enjoyment of the  whole life, and not alone that of
the day or hour.  With Socrates, it is "to bring phi-
losophy down from the clouds, and to make it the basis
of morality."
  But we started with the thought that it is not well  for
a man's self that he get over-rich.  "If  I were as rich
as the day," said Benjamin Franklin, "  I would be as
generous  as the sun.   But, stop," he queries, "is it
the true experience, as people say, that wealth imparts
a bird-lime quality to  a man which permits of actions,
at which, in his native purity, he  would revolt?"
  It takes a very strong man to resist the deteriorating
influences of a great bank account;  it seems  like  the
virus which gets into the sore on the hand of a dissec-
tor : there are,  in the world, people too  strong for the
poison ;  but  there are not many of them.  One word,
however, in spite of all this, would seem to contain the
duty and  the safety of a man,—"Steward !"  I am a
steward.   It  might, perhaps, be  questioned if one so
esteeming himself could have too much in his charge;
true it  is, that his neighbor, not so called, would not be
without reason  for  rejoicing that the care came not to
him; but the steward must enjoy a satisfaction in  re-
cognizing that he has been selected as the instrument
of such influence.
  Poverty, on the other hand, is not less an instrument
of deterioration to  a  man.   It is the other  extreme. 
ODD HOURS  OF  A PHYSICIAN.
Can a man  grow in  grace, with the bill of his baker
waiting at the  front door, and the butcher battering
away at the back gate ?  Some  men could;  Giordano
Bruno paled only a shade when the fagots were lighted.
Still, one will do well not to subject his capillaries to
unnecessary trials.  An irate baker may make one blush
even if he does not  make him pale.  Keep out of the
temptations  of poverty; this is the safer  rule where it
is possible to follow it.  An imprudent man is a breeder
of discontent, and his pleasures shallow as he advances.
"Twenty pounds  for  an  income," said  Micawber,
"and twenty pounds and sixpence spent, and there-
suit  is misery.  Nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings,
and sixpence spent, and the result is happiness."   The
man who was always "waiting for something  to  turn
up,"  made  few more sensible expressions than  this.
Better, much better, to dine on the penny-roll  than be
in debt for the sixpence.
  A man may have a comfortable home, so long as he
has independence, but only so long.  I knew once an
author quite akin with Mr.  Boker's "Ivory Carver;"
he carved  his thoughts, and his wife and children  suf-
fered.  Poor things ! I often wished I could see a  gen-
eral family-funeral from that house : it would have been
the least of their evils.  Uncommon sense is never to
be allowed  to take  the place of the commoner  and
more convenient  article.  If it is to be comfortable
up-stairs, the crack in the smoky kitchen stove  is to be
doctored;  if one  is to  avoid the scurvy,  vegetables
must come from the garden, and there must be vege-
tables even though there may be no roses.
  Socrates was a grand man.  We may all rejoice  that 
              WISE AND OTHERWISE.          T53

 he was just  exactly what  he was; but, for all that, I
 may sympathize with  Phcenarete, and moan with Xan-
 thippe over his family delinquencies.  A man who, at
 earliest  morning, is found stopping mechanics on the
 way to their shops to enter into disputation, or who, in
 forgetfulness  of three inquiring, restless children at
 home, stands, statue-like, all night in meditation, is not
 just  exactly the one  to grow amiability in a woman.
 I  find here the vulnerable tendo-Achillis in my hero,
 and see just so  much  the  less wisdom in him when he
 speaks of "marrying  this woman, because,  desiring to
 live and converse with men, he felt convinced that if
 he could  endure her,  he could endure all  others."  I
 cannot help but feel that I should have entertained just
 a  trifle more respect for his perfections had he told, in-
 stead, how he watched  the sick babies, or brought home
 the marketing.—But a field of wheat is not less bread
 that here and there is a tare.
   Rip Van Winkle would have converted an angel  into
 a shrew. Mr. Jefferson, with his smooth, genial face and
 oily twaddling, may not deceive us.  Rip was precisely
 what  Gretchen describes him as being:  "A good-for-
 nothing, drunken, unfeeling, unsympathizing, worthless
 brute !"  Lacking she, adjectives, to fill up the picture, I
 cannot and I will  not  laugh  at the  rabbit, which the
 hungry, tired-out woman gets only in words  to put into
 her pot; it may be funny to Rip, but I sympathize with
 Gretchen.
   Half a loaf is better than no bread ; do not less be-
cause you may not do more.   Mr. Kaye, in his charm-
ing " Optimist"  essays, refers to picking up  a paper in
which was a passage headed "Romantic Suicide," re- 
ODD HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN.
lating how "a fine young man, named Arsene, hanged
himself in  his master's house, near Paris," his  quar-
rel with the world  being that Nature had condemned
him to be a grocer.  Behind him he left  a memoran-
dum, bewailing his hard lot, and beseeching his parents
" to  erect a simple tombstone to his memory, and to
inscribe upon it these words, ' Born to be a man ; died
a grocer!'"  Now the plain truth is,  says the  Opti-
mist, and every sensible person may only say the same
thing,  " he was not born to be a man ;  if he had  been,
he would have lived a grocer."  " I remember,"  wrote
this Arsene,  "to  have  somewhere read  that a man
should apply his intelligence to be useful to humanity,
and as I see that I shall never be fit for anything  but
to weigh cheese and dried plums,  I have made up  my
mind to go  to another world which I have heard of,
and see  whether  there may not be a  place  for  me
there,"—a place  which Mr. Kaye expresses  his  full
faith in his finding,—the place of silly grocerlings.
  It is a very disagreeable thing to work out of  one's
place; indeed, it  is just  about as  bad a thing as one
may  conceive of; but,  if one  would not get in  the
right traces when  he had the chance, or if it might be
that he never had a chance, why he has nothing else to
do than to work astraddle or outside entirely, if so it
may be.   Do your best, and trust it shall all come  out
right in some way or another.   What is  higher philos-
ophy than this?  Then, again, it is not a difficult  thing
for a  person without any particular temperament  to
mistake his calling.  The only way I was ever able to
decide my own was by tossing up a penny,—rather, I
should say, I brought things to a  focus in that  way: 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
155
throwing up the coin it came down head, and that fin-
ished the matter ; the inanimate head settled what the
sentient head could not, and I am satisfied that I stum-
bled into the right place, for, however trifling may be
the success met with, I never have felt that I could have
done any better elsewhere.  I pull my best; it does not
at all worry me that I may be criticised and blamed for
not doing better ; I simply cannot, and that is the end
of it.  I am not going to inflate myself like yEsop's
frog, or burst the boiler by attempting the work of  a
ten-horse power with five.  I recognize that five-horse
power is just as good, indeed better, in its place than
would the ten be.
   It is wisdom to strike the mean of one's good'; too
much good is a positive evil.  Wine is a good thing,  a
very good thing, but it  takes not much overuse to make
of  it a very  bad thing.   So is it good to enjoy the
luxury of  a feast, but  a feast  every day so clogs the
appetite that  soon nothing is enjoyable.   A man is to
understand that nothing is positively good  in the ab-
stract, as is there no such thing  as evil in itself.   Good
is the absence of evil, and evil is the absence of good.
"Every pleasure," says the Epicurean  school, "is in
itself good, but, in comparison with  another, it may
become an evil."  "The philosopher," says Epicurus,
" differs from the common man  in this : that while they
both  seek pleasure, the former knows how to  forego
certain enjoyments which will cause pain and vexation
hereafter; whereas the  common man  seeks only the
immediate enjoyment."   Money, fame, the pursuit of
enjoyment, all come  in the categories of good or evil,
as they may be placed.   Let the thoughts of to-day be 
 156      ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

 carried into to-morrow, and ask  the  morrow of the
 actions of to-day.  Instinct in a brute, should be reason
 in a man, the abuse, only, of instinct can make of it an
 evil.
   Simplicity yields  the truest pleasure, yields it  the
 longest, and costs least of labor or of care.   Did ever
 a man tire of water?  Does not the convivialist turn to
 the spring from the sparkle of his Moselle and rejoice
 in it as the most refreshing of draughts ?  Does  not a
 man step down  from the silken cushions of his coach
 and envy the  stable-boy who may use  his  legs ?   Did
 ever a man  tire of self-locomotion ? and was there ever
 one who did not tire of all other kinds ?   But man is
 alike the  world over, — the gouty foot in the coach
 envies the shoeless one upon the pave, and  the shoeless
 foot envies  the gouty one, and the possessors of both
 are alike foolish in their ignorance of wherein consists
 the true good.
   A man,  to satisfy the morrow,  is to consider  the
 effects of what he does to-day,—and day by day.
   Blessed is that man, I have been thinking, who, to
 his age, has preserved the freshness, the simplicity, and
 the purity of youth.  If upon earth there is one sight
 more refreshing  than another, it is the  beholding of a
 good, great man,—a man with an unseared heart, and
 an unpolluted vision.  And such men there are.
  A day, to have been well spent,  must have in  it no
 sense of condemnation.   That which  man calls  con-
science is a light shining for the  guidance  of every
individual.  It  is no argument at all against its truth-
fulness that it exhibits  not the  same pathway to all.
Right is not an abstract thing, but varies with circum- 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
J57
 stances.   The Right of the savage is not the Right of
 his civilized neighbor.  Right, to the individual, is the
 acting up to  his highest intelligence, let the grade of
 this be what it may.  Conscience is a thing of growth,
 and its highest  and fullest development is love.  Love
 is considerate, is tender, is mindful; is to prefer another
 to one's  self; is to forget all selfishness in  a humanity
 that considers not first one's own desires or comforts;
 is to place others before one's self.
  To be in that  mind which  broadens into a general
 love of our kind is  to be  in  the way which makes us
 producers of the greatest  amount  of comfort,  which
 comfort, of a necessity, is reflected back upon the giver,
 thus making a happiness which is, to its limit, general,
 and of a circle,—it gives  back what it receives,  and
 receives  what it  gives back.   Life may  not  be squared
 by rule, seeing  that  men differ much in temperament
 and disposition ;  but a rule which will square itself with
 life is, "To do to others as you would that others should
 do  to you ;" and whatever the situation, whatever the
 circumstances, this a man can do to his fellows.
  A surgeon, for  example, may not do upon the person
 of another an  operation  which, under like  circum-
 stances,  he would not have performed upon  himself.
 A business man  may  not  congratulate himself on  a
 bargain which is secured to  him at the  expense of
 another.   Either action has in it  the  elements of  a
wrong, which wrong must, of a necessity,  be  in some
way a  detriment to the offender.   It cannot be  that any
action is  right, or can bring true gain,  where  another
in any respect suffers.
  A man cannot,  in the proper sense of the word, be  a 
158      ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
manly man, where his calculations consider self alone.
A capitalist who forgets, in  his intercourse with labor,
that work should redound to a common good, is as cul-
pable as  the laborer who is constantly trying to injure
capital,—more so perhaps, as  for  the latter a measure
of excuse may exist  in that lack of knowledge which is,
or  should  be, judgment.   I once asked  a prominent
capitalist, overrun  with  business  and burdened  with
care,  why he did not give over his charge and  retire
from his work.  "I have," he answered, "three hundred
partners  in the  business [alluding to his employees],
none  of  whom, with the exception of myself, are able
to give up the work.  If I retire,  all must retire,  or, if
not this,  must necessarily lose much by my leaving them.
Long ago," said he, " I felt that a man consulted best
the principle of  true success when self was not put the
prominent  personage in one's calculations;  so in  this
business  each  individual is  made  as truly a partner as
circumstances admit, and in consequence, all of us find
a comfortable and satisfactory support; more even than
this;  each  one recognizes that the common success is
his  individual success, and thus every man holds as a
link in a chain."
  I once asked a physician, full half of  whose time I
knew  to  be spent in the alleys and by-ways, wherein he
found his compensation.  He answered me in this wise:
  "Indiscriminate  charity,  from the much that I  have
seen, and daily see, I am satisfied has in it even more of
evil than of good;  laziness is, through it, engendered,
and pauperism encouraged.  Even  the grand clinics
of the schools," continued  he, "havens  in which so
many find relief and rest, are made by the shiftless and 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
159
 dishonorable, ministers to their prodigality; the college
 door standing  so  wide open that discrimination  no
 longer  distinguishes  between  him who can and ought
 to  contribute  to  its expenses and him  who cannot.
 More than  in this  the  physician  is concerned, is  its
 effects upon the people themselves.  At first they ex-
 cuse the act of meanness  in  taking advantage of the
 charity by arguing themselves into the conviction that
 here is to be secured the services of the most able men ;
 but the apparent gain of a free service experienced, they
 are ever after found as pensioners on the  purses of the
 schools, and it is rare  indeed that any contribution to
 the expenses incurred in treating them is ever offered.
 From  this  step of dependence these people  are often
 enough found taking a second, and it may very well be
 imagined to what extent a man's self-respect  may thus
 be destroyed.*
   "Street giving—purses opened by warm and generous
 nearts—is another  source  of greater evil than good.
 This appeals to, and encourages, the lowest  traits;  it
 never did a good save by accident, or if it did, then the
 head rather than the heart unloosed the strings.   Neither
 is this giving  charity, for a true  charity would prompt
 such fuller  relief as could only come from inquiry into
 the relations of cases, and this might not be  from  the
 dime or dollar given.  But where," continued he, "you
 say I am most found, exists the field for the dispensation
 of good ;  here, in the dark, close alleys, off  from the
 gay streets, indigence seeks to hide itself; here poverty,
supperless and bedless, is found;  here destitution must
* Good is not good in itself, but is always of association. 
160       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

sink  into the seething mass  of  the hopeless if no out-
stretched hand is by to save.  Seeing these things, I have
not been able to satisfy my conscience otherwise than in
personal effort for the seeking out of true distress ; and
this work," said he, "saddening as  it  may seem, has
come to furnish me with the greatest happiness of living.''

  True charity comes only from  a heart attuned to love;
a loving, generous heart thinks  not of the return of the
bread cast upon the waters, but it comes back never-
theless.
  I may find fault with the publisher of my book, or
the book  of anybody else, if no higher motive makes
him a publisher than the question of sale.   The moral
nature of a man who, for  money, would multiply evil
thoughts, must, without doubt, be in  an  unenviable
state; and though wealth  should cover him, as with a
mantle, yet must he be poor indeed.   Nothing is one
to consider more than  the matter of the influence he
exerts;  this applies  not more to the richest than to the
poorest man.
  Let no one seek to argue himself into a belief that he
is without  such influence, or by such standard weigh his
actions.
  To the ground was thrown a  seed, and he who cast
it, passing on his way,  forgot him of it.   But the seed
died  not;  from it sprang  a tender sprout; as time
passed,  this sprout became a yielding, swaying sapling,
and this, in turn, became  a great tree by the  wayside;
and to this tree birds came and  found a habitation, and
the children of the  people came and played  about its
roots, and the wearied  traveler  rested himself beneath 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
161
 its shade.   Standing by the seaside, upon a great hill,
 it became known  in  time as  a landmark, and many
 mariners it directed to the haven; it has stood for years,
 and bids fair to last for generations.  And this habita-
 tion  for the birds, this play-place  for happy children,
 this rest for the wearied, this mark which gives to the
 mariner the first thrill of home, came from a seed,—a
 little seed, thrown by a listless  man, as he passed along
 a quiet path by a hilltop.

   "John," said a staid Quaker wife, living in a primi-
 tive settlement,—"John, when  next thee goes to the city
 thee will bring me home a service of silver for our table.''
   "Silver !" answered John. " Does thee think we can
 afford that?"
   "Afford it!" returned the wife.  "Assuredly;  have
 we not laid by much money? are we not indeed over-
 rich for our wants?"
   "Well, does thee think, then, that neighbor C can
 afford silver, and neighbors D and E?"
   "Oh, certainly not; we shall be  the only persons in
 the neighborhood to have such  a thing."
   "Then, granted we have the money, have we the right
 to bring amongst our neighbors that which must carry
 with  it envy,  and introduce, most  likely, attempts at
 competition, which will be a source of discomfort to
 our poorer  friends?"   Ruth  felt it  better to continue
 with the china, and the simplicity and quiet of the set-
 tlement remained undisturbed.
  Worthy alone of the true man is the charity  that
 neither parades nor vaunts itself.  Let good  works  be
done, because to do good is to be in unison with good.
                        11 
162       ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

  Starting in the fresh morning from his eastern ocean
bed, decked with spangles of gold and laden to over-
flowing with blessings, on his joy visit goes the vivifying
sun;  down  over the earth  into  the  drowsy  eyes  of
languid beauty casts he  a greeting;  through massive
window trappings, into the great chamber where rests
exhausted the form of a king, makes  he his way;  by
crevices  of  the  damp cellar, where, crouching and
hiding in despair, the neglected, yet  persecuted one,
had sought to find refuge, enters he ; into the cheerless
closet-room of the tired seamstress goes he with a whisper
of hope;  and blackness is made light, the darkness of
night and the darkness of heart take to themselves wings
and fly away;  beauty is invested with renewed charms ;
the mighty one starts up to his life labor; the deserted
one, who, desirous only  of oblivion, had  laid down
in her weariness, goes out now in hope; the overtasked
one, she who, in despair, had almost faltered,  deter-
mines  still  again to  trust;  the  sleepy  insect  world
awakens,  flowers  unfold  afresh their concealed tints,
the morning breezes spread broadcast their wealth of
perfume, birds give to  nature the incense of their songs,
earth,  sea, sky, everything mingles  in the diversified
praise.  The great sun gave all this good, conferred all
this happiness, imparted all this joy;  but it was done
—in silence.
  Luna, the night angel, the silver engarmented, how
placidly she  looks down over the quiet  valley and upon
the sleeping  lake ; in  what a  soft sheen brightens she
the hills, and the  mountains, and the juttings of earth;
how speeds her grace from land to land, and from ocean
center to ocean center ; how from heaven to earth leaps 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
163
 her  glory, and how it  envelops prayers of trust, of
 hope, of heart thankfulness !—yet all is in silence.

   Charity must extend itself to judgment.
   What man  calls  judgment is a matter which should
 give him  great concern.   Judgment, to be solid, can
 only be so by being founded on that state of under-
 standing which takes in a matter judged to the extent
 of its circle.   Thus, if we take offenses in  themselves,
 we have but the  one side of a circle, the other being
 him, or them, or that, through which  offenses come.
 Now, among my  own acquaintance is a most excellent
 lady, the  balance of whose temperament is such that
 she might well be described as temperamentless;  this
 lady can find  in  herself no excuse  or  pardon for that
 which  deviates from the straight  line.   Let us see
 if this  is  right.  It is truly remarked by  Mr. Lecky
 that  "there  are men whose lives are spent in willing
 one  thing and desiring  another."   A person without
 temperament may only justly judge one with, through
 an education aside  from  himself. .Fernelius observes,
 that  "it is the greatest  part of our  felicity to be well
 born ;  and it were  happy for humankind if only such
 parents  as are sound of  body and mind should be suf-
 fered to marry;"  and Lemnius indorses the assertion
 in his observation that " the very affections follow their
seed, and  the malice and bad condition of children are,
many times, to be  wholly imputed  to  their parents."
Aristotle relates,  in  his  "Ethics," the case of a  man
who defended himself for beating his father, "because,"
said he, "my father  beat his father,  and he again beat
his ;  and  he also  (pointing  to his child) will beat me 
164       ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

when he comes to be a man, for it runs in our family."
An illustration from  higher life is found  in the  Bruns-
wick family, of whom Lord Grenville says, "This house
always has  quarreled,  and  always  will  quarrel, from
generation to generation ; for contention is of their
blood."   "Passion," says Dr. Elam,  "appears to be
hereditary;  anger, fear, envy, jealousy, libertinage, glut-
tony, drunkenness,—all are liable to be transmitted to the
offspring,  especially if both parents are alike afflicted;
and this, as  has often enough been proved, not by force
of example or education merely,  but by direct  consti-
tutional inheritance."   To understand  this, one  has
but to recognize the  outward likeness existing in fami-
lies to appreciate that the internal may alike conform.
   The hereditary  transmission of  disease is familiar
enough  to every observer.  In hospital  service it  has
chanced over and  again  to myself to witness the most
sorrowful illustration of such a law,—persons physically
bad all over, yet from no fault of their own.   Has any
one ever seen parents afflicted with bad  teeth transmit
good ones to their children ?  The  instances must be
very rare.   Whole families  die, one member after the
other, with  hypertrophied hearts  or congested brains.
   To pursue such  an investigation from its pleasanter
aspect, one  may consider the transmission  of what is
termed genius,  the legislative capacity, for example, as
exhibited in the Adams family, in the two Pitts, the two
Foxes. The Booth family or the Kemble may illustrate
it  in  the  dramatic way.   In the  arts,  Thorwaldsen,
Raphael,  Vandyke,  Titian, Vernet, all  these  had an
hereditary transmission.  Tasso, in poetry, and Beetho-
ven, in music, each descended from a father alike imbued. 
WISE AND OTHERWISE.
I65
   It is not, however,  that an  individual may seek to
cover his defect, or fault, in the excuse of its transmis-
sion.   This would certainly not help him to the hap-
piness  of which his ailment is the antagonist.  The
man with bad teeth best saves his aching nerves, not by
grumbling at his ancestors, but  by going to the dentist.
The man with a transmitted heart-enlargement holds
himself as good as his neighbor by the  avoidance of
excitement.   The  irritable encephalon is preserved in
equilibrium  by keeping away from  the  mid-day sun,
and noting the pulsation of the  arteries.
  A man with a moral vice is to stand guard, as  must
the man with the physical defect; as the  one may pre-
serve himself,  so may  the other.  True, it is a great
bother and  trouble constantly  to be on sentinel duty,
but it seems about the only way to  bar' an enemy out,
and a camp  into which the foe finds his way has to bid
good-by to comfort.   Vigilance would therefore seem
to be the lesser of the two evils.
  A wise man—i.e. a man who would be happy—should
be lenient to the faults of others, but never to his own.
One is made better by thinking well of  other people,
but never by thinking too well of himself.  In short, I
may readily condense  into  the repetition  of a single
line all that has been  here written  (thus showing  not
only truth, but as well the uselessness of the over-many
words used), and quote, that "to do unto others as you
would that others should do unto you," is the channel
which avoids the whirlpool  on  the  one side, and  the
rock on the other. 
UTOPIA.
I  TAKE up my pen  to-night with the conviction
    that what may be written shall well deserve to  be
called random thoughts.   I  feel upon  me that hazy,
dreamy mood, which, if not profitable in the indulgence,
is at least  so very pleasant, and in which one finds it
impossible to fix  the attention, for any length of time,
on any particular fact or fancy.  I say such a mood is
most pleasant; when it comes to  one in  this working
world, he may hesitate to rebuke,  but rather,  courting
the fancy, fix himself the more comfortably in his arm-
chair, and  live  away the hour in  the  delicious soul-
luxury it creates.   It may be one cannot entirely satisfy
himself  that hours so spent are excusable, we have all
grown so  very practical.  I only know,  for  my own
part, that in the  extreme love  I have of such enjoyment
I am wont to put off conscience with the assurance that
the time might  be worse employed, and  thus quieting
the voice, forget  everything but the blazing coals of my
office fire, wherein pass and repass the wandering ideals.
  Man  is  of  many  moods;  to-day, it  may be, the
boundary of his desires contemplates  but the soul-com-
munion  it  is permitted him to enjoy with his Maker.
To-morrow, some world-care  comes over him, and
almost ere he  is aware the good spirit  has flown, and
he is of  the earth, earthy.
  Who  has not  known  these  changes?  who has not
      (166) 
UTOPIA.
167
 had his equanimity destroyed by some trivial accident,
 or the whole tenor of his reflections changed through
 some unexpected incident ?  I, for my part, have many,
 many such changes, many such disturbances.  That I
 make the admission is, perhaps, only wherein  I differ
 from people who, wisely, or  unwisely,  as it may be,
 keep their  thoughts  to  themselves.   Garrulousness,
 once and awhile  at any rate, is good for a man;  it
 relieves him,—works off the excess of brain-secretion,
 as Dr. Maudsley calls it, just as a dose of  physic clears
 one  of the bile; so I will think, to-night, and scribble,
 and you, gentle reader, can read  or not, as you may
 please.
  To-day ushered  in  spring,—the life-season.  Not
 coming in clouds  and storm,  but  with warm sunshine
 came the morning, and with a kind of summer  sighing
 went away the twilight.  I have been risking a cold the
 livelong day by keeping  one of  the windows of my
 office open ; it was one of my fancies, I could not resist
 the  inclination.  A near  neighbor,  a great  lover of
 birds, hung out to-day the cage containing her canaries;
 perhaps it was to hear the birds sing I kept my window
 open.  It  has always seemed to me, by the way, that
 birds recognize instinctively  the very first day of spring,
—have you never remarked it?  They sing and sing as if
 first  they had found voice, and were luxuriating in the
enjoyment of it.
      ******
  I have been sitting the last hour  thinking of summer
coming.  Are not summer scenes seducing ?  Hills and
vales, and dark old woods,  and  nothing to do but enjoy
them.  Ah ! here  is the pleasure in the possession of 
168      ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
comfortable and reasonable means.   Money is good,—
most good in its place; one may not deny that.
  On an August morning of the last summer I packed
in my carpet-bag  the few articles without which even
the most unpretending ruralizer may not get along, and,
with a  purse calculated  to  supply only the plainest
wants, started off  for a visit to the  haunts of boyhood.
Haunts  of boyhood !   Is there not a volume in this ex-
pression ?   How is to be pitied the man or woman who,
born amid brick walls and paved streets, has no memory
of childhood haunts!  I use  the  phrase thinkingly.
Alleys and courts, or widest streets, can have connected
with  them none  of the  sweet memories which cling
about the  grove, the fishing-place, or the arbored lane.
The memory of rides in the omnibus, or even in  the
fine-furnished cab,  can  have  entwined with it no
such  freshness as  belongs to reminiscences of pony-
races, or  of  rides in the slow-moving  ox-cart, going
fieldward.
   Hanging over the  bookstand, in  my office, is a paint-
ing,  representing a favorite home haunt.   The piece is
the merest daub, regarded as a work of art, the whole
cost being, I believe, not over four or  five  dollars.
I was a boy  when I made the purchase, and was en-
abled to give the artist the order, I remember well, by
denying myself a  saddle.   Yet, although intrinsically
the piece  is  so valueless, although it still retains the
very bark  frame made by my own  hands at the time,
to save  further outlay,—it will  retain  the old frame,
I imagine, as long  as I  may  live to  own  it,__I am
doubtful whether  the cost of  all   my  other  pictures
would suffice to buy  it. 
UTOPIA.
169
  The picture represents, or  is intended to represent,
a creek scene.   Two great oaks, one on either bank,
cast their shadows;  the one  to the left, back over the
field, the other, over the quiet stream.  Moored to the
tree on the right bank is seen a little boat, in which sit
two boys, fishing.   The  boy in the red jacket I had
the artist put in for me; the idea, as I remember, greatly
delighted me at the time.   There is a line of fence, too,
in the  foreground of the scene.  I recall the trouble I
had in persuading the painter to sketch a certain odd
notch there is in one of the rails; at low tide, it was only
by clambering along  this fence that I could get dryshod
into my boat.  In the background of the piece, leaning
against the sky, is a hill;  a fine old hill it is in reality,
but in  the picture it  much more reminds one of a vol-
cano in a state of eruption; at least, many times it has
been so mistaken.  There is a pebble shore too, and the
stakes  to which  I tied my  boat.   The wave-ripples,
which  come down even with the bark of the  frame, the
artist has made to the very mould and fashion of what
they were; they satisfy me, even now, as much as, on
canvas, they could be made to satisfy.  There is the gable
of a long, low frame building, which, by looking closely
between  the branches of the greater tree, may be ob-
served  lying to the left of the boat-stakes   A house of
many memories is that long,  low frame to me; it was a
boyhood trysting-place, and  it is the home whose fire-
side, next to my own, most invites  me.  The man who
now inhabits  it was a boy when I was a boy, and we
were friends then as we are friends now.
  Let  me come back to my  excursion.  Here was the
retreat I sought. 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
  Have you ever met, as you  have been traveling on
over the life-journey, the character of man who seems,
and  always  has  seemed since first you  met him,  in
doubt as to how he shall live so as to secure the greatest
good ?  My friend is just such a character, and has been
since he  was the merest boy.   I call him  "Utopia."
I can scarcely think of him by any other name.  He
has askeS me, I think, every time we have met  for the
past thirty years, as to the location of Utopia.  " Where
is it?" he is wont to ask.  "Where is Utopia, Darby?"
I think I shall never forget the occasion of his first ask-
ing it; perhaps the impression has remained the more
vivid from having connected with it the memory of an
expose of very marked  ignorance.   I had to ask what
he  meant by Utopia.   It was a fine July morning;  a
party had been gotten up to take a pleasure-sail on the
bay, and I, as the friend of Trin,—Trinton is his name,
—was  commissioned to convey to him the invitation.
Trin's place, or rather his father's place,—it was his
father's then,—was most conveniently approached from
ours by a sail up the creek,—the creek represented in
the picture.  As I approached the ford, floated there
by  the tide,—the ford is also  partly seen in the back-
ground of the  painting,—I came, most unexpectedly
and agreeably, upon my friend.   As usual, he was in
reverie.   You never could find  him idle; that was an
impossibility, at  least I thought so; if it was not with
his hands he was working, his brain would  be sure to
be  busy.  So far distant, on this occasion, were his
thoughts, that I had dropped my boat-hook into his
hand before he observed my coming.
   He was a  strange fellow,  as I  have meant  to  imply. 
UTOPIA.
171
Without a word he caught the hook, drawing my boat
to the rock upon which he sat.  " I have been thinking,
Darby," said  he, "thinking the whole  morning about
Utopia.  Where is  it? and what is it?"
   I answered  him that I  had never even so much as
heard of the place.   Did  he know whether it was in
Europe, Asia,  Africa, or America?
   " Ay ! that's the rub, Darby.   ' Where is it ?'  That's
just what I desire most to  find out."
   I suggested  that we should go to the  house and get
his atlas.   He burst into a laugh, declared I must be a
fool, or a wit, he knew not which.   Ceasing his laugh,
he drew me to a seat beside him.  "Utopia, Darby,"
—he always commenced  his philosophizing speeches
with a  noun,—"Utopia,  Darby, is either a reality or
an idea,—one  or the other it can only be ; this is what
you may term  a differential conclusion.  Now, which
is it? and what  is it?  In  other words,  is Happiness a
reality or is it a myth ?  If a reality, Where does it exist ?
and how?"
  I never had  right to claim any particular  perceptive
quickness, but I was no dullard.  If given the  inkling
of an idea,  I generally managed to catch up the gist of
the matter about as  quickly as others.—"Yes, Utopia;
well, what about it?" I asked.

   "Reflection  is that  which distinguishes,  or  should
distinguish,  man from other animals.   A cow crops the
grass, and in the sensual gratification experienced  lies
her only pleasure.   So also may  man enjoy the  nicely-
prepared salad, but outside the  gratification afforded
the palate lies a greater; a sense  is given him whereby, 
172      ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

with appreciating eyes, he marks the germination of the
seed, the shooting forth of the tender sprout, and which
loses him in astonishment as he follows to its comple-
tion the wonderful miracle.   Now, Darby,  does  the
cow or the  man find the most happiness in the grass?"
He was trying to work out  some such  problem as that,
he said.  "Is happiness to be found in the earthly, or
in the intellectual?"
  I declined expressing an opinion upon a subject ap-
parently so metaphysical in character; but I told him
if he would accept an invitation I bore him for  a sail
upon the bay,  I could promise him pleasure outside of
cows and salads.
  "I shall be  too  glad  to go, Darby,—anything for a
change. And here comes up another matter about which
I was thinking.  Mankind are ever longing for novelty,
never satisfied.  Confine one to the city, he thinks by
day and dreams by night of green pastures and running
streams.  Place  him  in the country, give him  every
surrounding of the rural condition, back his  thoughts
go  to  the  exchange and to the warehouse.   Let him
ride upon  the waves, straightway he  sighs  for lanrj;
upon the land, and he pants for the excitement of the
billow,—never satisfied ; grasping, yet ever wanting;
obtaining, yet ever seeking."
  I asked him, I remember, what he gained by thinking
forever  of such fudgy things.   Why did he not learn
to live  like the rest of us ?
  " Like the rest of you? Well said, Darby.  The most
of you  live the  same,—are  born,  eat and drink, die,
come from  nothing, live nothing, die nothing."
  He drew from his pocket a manuscript. 
UTOPIA.
173
   "I  have been writing a sermon, Darby," he said.
 "Will you listen to it?"*
   With the best grace at command, I prepared myself
 for the infliction.   I  thought a homily quite  out of
 place, particularly as I was in a hurry to arrange with
 him for the excursion.
   "Did you ever think,  Darby,"—he  looked straight
 into my eyes,—"ever think how ungratefully man acts
 towards his God, how much we owe God, how depend-
 ent  we are upon him  for  every  blessing?   And did
 you ever think of  the regret which  must  some day
 surely come of this ingratitude ? of the precedents which
 prove it?"
   He  unrolled the  paper.  " My sermon will explain
 itself," he  said.

   "Oh that man would praise the Lord for his goodness
 and for his wonderful works to the children of men!"
   It was the text.
   "Well,  go  on,"  I said, my attention, which had
 gone with a piece of floating bark, being attracted back,
 after the lapse of several minutes, by the silence which
 followed.   He was in one of  his reveries.  "Go on,"
 I repeated, nudging his elbow.
   He straightened  out the pages, which had  rolled
 themselves  together.
   " God have compassion on us, ingrates that we are !"
   I felt inclined to find fault with this very first line; I
 was no ingrate.  He read on :

  * The author would suggest that in a waste-paper box he has seen
something very like this  sermon.  The reader may also have met
with it. 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
  " Breathing his pure air, drinking from his refresh-
ing springs, basking in his delicious sunshine, and yet
forgetting  (conceal  it,  oblivion),  forgetting  even
thanks.
  "Father, spare us the  so richly-merited contempt.
Oh that man could understand and appreciate  his de-
pendent  situation !  poor,  weak, helpless being ! plant-
ing and watering, taking  to himself  the credit  of the
increase, living and enjoying, congratulating self.
  " Look out over your  possessions, Americans.   A
territory almost boundless in extent, fringed on the one
side  by the cloud-capped  waves of the Atlantic, girded
on the other by  the more gently rolling waters of the
Pacific;  embracing within  its bounds almost  every
variety of  climate, from the frigid, to the soft, volup-
tuous tropical;  producing the hardy fruits of the North,
the refreshing  pulps of the  sunny South, the  grace-
ful maize,  the  flowering  cotton ;  abounding in ores
of every description, from the stubborn  iron  to the
glittering gold;  minerals, from the  homely quartz to
the brilliant, sparkling  diamond;  producing  in  the
richest abundance everything calculated to promote our
greatness as  a nation and our happiness as a people.
Do we look out  over nature, our  eyes  are greeted by
vast, unending panoramas, of unsurpassed magnificence;
our glorious sky,  in its ever-changing beauty, rivals the
descriptions of half-fairyland Italy.   Our echoing hills,
our valleys flowing with oil and wine, our rivers  rolling
in majesty oceanward, our boundless forests, flowery
meads, and grassy  knolls,  our home joys, the  proud,
earth-defying wavings of  our never-humbled  flag, our
productive  soil,  our own  intrinsic  nobility,__all  all 
UTOPIA.
175
combine to give us might and happiness  in our single-
ness!"   Pause.
   I looked up, thinking he claimed some special atten-
tion.   Unheeding, he read on :
   " You remember how, long years ago, in the Mediter-
ranean Sea, bloomed a country, famous and  happy, and
great as our own noble land, the favored of God,  the
envied of man.  Music, and flowers, and  sunlight were
there ;  singing brooks and waving forests, caroling birds
and twilight whisperings.   And might was there; great-
ness sat enthroned in classic grandeur, art and science
crowned loftiest pinnacles.   Nations, lost  in wonder-
ment  and  admiration,  bowed,  hailing  her  mistress.
' Happy people !' you exclaim.  Follow.
   "In forgetfulness of the upholding cornerstone, came
to that people pride and dissatisfaction, presumption
and ingratitude; soon upon the waves floated the flags
of her armaments, over the land spread the assassins of
her ambition ;  and now, in scenes of intervention and
triumph, conquest and  tyranny, she  branded herself
'Ingrate.'  Follow on.
   "The reckoning was coming;  the eye of an outraged
Deity was upon her.  His ear heard;  angels, with won-
dering faces and astonished souls, looked on, and then,
in pity,—in very pity,—as they beheld a people weep,
threw over  the scene a pall of blackness, enshrouding
it  in the obscurity of the past.   Yes, Rome was  the
pall; and Greece,—ancient Greece,—with her archi-
tectural beauties, her perfection in the arts and sciences,
the wonder  of the world, of her well-governed  and
rejoicing people, mingled  her atoms with  the things of
the past.   Follow on. 
ODD HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN.
  "God would have on earth a pre-eminent people,—
a people whose content, whose charity, whose elevation
might live an example to the world.  Rome was chosen;
from her seven hills light went out  over all Europe,
illumined Asia, drove part of the  blackness from  the
borders of  Africa; and then Rome—chosen, elevated
Rome—forgot God,—God, the caretaker of the hea-
then as of  the Christian;  God, the cornerstone of  the
fabric of good will  to all men.  Soon  came interven-
tion and dictation.  Earth looked upon the legions,
and unresisting bent a powerless neck.   Again was the
pall cast;  from  mountain fastnesses  poured horde
after horde of the ferocious Vandals, scattering to  the
winds of heaven the remnants of Roman glory.  Fol-
low on.
   "Are not  the  reverberations of the drums, which
sounded the pas de charge on the  plains of Austerlitz,
still ringing in our ears ?   Cannot we  recall, word for
word, the  ordre du jour which excited  to  the highest
pitch of enthusiasm the brave army of the tricolor?  Can
we hot remember  how, but a few short years  back,
France  towered to the very heavens, crowning a pyra-
mid of skulls?  Alas, the star of her brightness  has
set, and she, too,  has given  place for a something
higher to come.
   "Oh that men might cultivate the divine within them
sufficiently to appreciate the blessings with which God
has surrounded them, and, appreciating, find their only
ambition in the works of his will!  The  precedents,
the world-awing  precedents,—give  us,  O Father, to
understand their teachings,—lessons taught by the sacri-
fice of millions, by the demolition  of greatness, by the 
UTOPIA.
177
annihilation  of human hopes, made necessary by the
conduct of the destroyed.
   "And we—now are we at our looms, and  costly
fabrics  clothe us.   We are in  our fields, and plenty
springs up about us.   We are in  our homes, and love
crowns the tempting feast.  We are in our halls, and
eloquence  steals away our doubts.  We  are  in  our
colleges, and science instructs us.  Upon the sea we
float, and our vessels carry the golden sands of Ophir.
Oh, how we should praise the Lord for his goodness and
for his wonderful works !
   "And yet, fools that we are, we seem to have little
or no sense of a life philosophy.
   "A dog passing over a brook,  seeing  the meat  he
carried doubled by reflection, let go that he held, grasp-
ing at the shadow, and lost all.
   "An Arnold, holding through the faith of esteeming
countrymen a noble fortress, seeing needed gold re-
flected, let go that he held, grasping at the shadow, and
lost all.
   "An Aaron  Burr, possessed  of fame,  riches, and
honor, seeing from the great Southwest reflected an
empire, let go  that he held, grasping at the shadow,
and lost all.
   "A mother-country, possessing colonies  of great
value,  seeing reflected, through the enchantment of
distance, a seeming advantage of stamp and other acts,
although carrying in her treasury ample equivalents, let
go that she held, grasping at the shadow, and lost all.
   "And so the world is teeming with precedents, great
and  startling ones for those in high  places, ordinary
and common  ones for those in low places."
                         12 
178       ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

  He turned several pages; he must have observed my
growing restlessness.
  "A certain rich man, dissatisfied  with possessions
enough for  thousands, built to himself  greater store-
houses, reared higher barns, and  then,  with his own
and the wealth .of others, sat him down to take his ease.
In his hand was no charity, in his heart no mercy; he
lived for self.  Law, in very disgust at his self-love and
unbrotherly greediness, in disgust at selfishness dis-
gracing to brutes, let drop the pall, and his place was
vacant.
  "A certain nobleman, having vast  estates, called
his  heirs together, to each giving great  possessions,—
enough for every want, and more; then, blessing, left
them, counseling with his last words  that each should
do to the other  as he would have done  to himself in
return.
  "But  soon the strongest slew the weaker, amalga-
mating theirs with his.   But  the  nobleman,  when he
heard of it, what did he ?  Dropped the pall, and the
conqueror was conquered."
  As my friend  read the last word of his sermon, he
crumpled together the manuscript and threw it far out
on the stream.
  Silently we watched the receding paper.
  " So goes life," at  length he exclaimed, as the paper
disappeared behind a little promontory.  "As a leaf-
boat  thrown by the mountain-breeze into the rivulet,
dancing, leaping, laughing, we start; around the tree-
roots we play, over obstructing pebbles we spring, by
the rock-side we eddy.  Then,  still dancing, leaping,
laughing, down  the hillside we  go, joying  in the sun- 
UTOPIA.
i yg
beam, joying in the moonbeam, joying in everything.
This is  boyhood ;  alas, when the base is reached  the
mountain is passed forever.
  "Next we meet the wood stream,—the placid wood
stream,  youth.   We go more calmly now, much more
calmly,  but  not less happily; this is the time of hope,
of looking  forward, of  love.   We  linger  not long
here, however;  we would stay, but the current resists
all effort to stem it.   We  look wistfully out  over  the
shore; we  think, If we might but lay ourselves in the
shade, and  watch forever other life-boats passing.   We
even try if  we may not do this, but the current drives
us on.   So, contenting ourselves, we joy in each pass-
ing beauty, live entirely in a present; thus, to the river
we pass.
  "The waves  and winds of this greater stream dash
frightfully our  frail bark; with  redoubled  energy we
resist the tide, but it is in vain.  Onward we  go,—on-
ward and outward.  The stream of manhood has us
upon its bosom ; if we would keep up, the waves and
the winds must  be struggled with.
  "The ocean  is reached; out on  its great waves we
go,—>ve cannot but go.  There are divers winds here.
One, if  happily we catch it, shall waft us to a haven of
delight and  safety.  Another blows towards the north,
—the cold and biting north. The maelstrom is there, and
if within the circles we  drift, around we shall go, around
—powerless around—and—down, down—lost."

  In the kitchen of my friend's house is the usual great
fireplace of the plantation-house.   The picture of it
comes just  now most vividly before me.  There was a 
180      ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

boy, Charlie, on the place, a kind of guard-servant and
friend to Trin.  A great  dog, too, connects himself
always with  the reminiscence, a  half Newfoundland,
half mongrel, yet, withal, a most sagacious brute.
  This old and roomy fireplace was the evening retreat
of my friend Charlie and  the dog June,—the insepar-
ables, I  called  them.  I believe you might have looked
here for them  with success almost any evening of the
whole  year, for,  if  it were summer, the piled  holly
boughs  made  the place attractive;  while in winter,—
ah !  truly on winter nights was it a retreat to be courted.
At either end,  crossing the hearth, was an  oaken bench.
Well carved and cut were these benches : Charlie, the
servant-boy, had much facility in this direction ;  it was
his habit to  carve while his master philosophized.
  As I  think of the fires that were wont  to blaze upon
that hearth,  I cannot but recall how apt I was to specu-
late on  the  amount of wood unnecessarily consumed.
Charlie would  have burned a forest if thereby Trin's
pleasure might have been enhanced.
  I was sitting one evening in Charlie's  corner of the
chimney.   Trin sat  opposite.   Charlie and June  lay,
both of them,  soundly sleeping, side by side, upon the
floor.   "Darby,"  exclaimed my friend, suddenly look-
ing up,—" Darby, do  you recall  the question I  asked
at the ford?"
  Our thoughts happened for once to be running in the
same channel.   I remembered it well, I answered him,
and was at the moment thinking of it.  The Sunday be-
fore I had been much struck with an expression uttered
in a Quaker meeting held in a neighboring village.  I
repeated the words as nearly as I could  recall  them, 
UTOPIA.
181
 suggesting  that therein  might be found an answer  to
 the question.  The exact words of the  Friend I find
 have quite gone from me.
   The expression, however, I well remember,  seemed
 to strike him.  He did not tell me so, but because he
 spoke not I knew it; it was his habit, when impressed,
 to drop his head upon his hand and go off into a reverie.
   Finding I had an advantage, I hastened to pursue
 it.  "If one," I told him, "situated as  he was, could
 not be happy, the cause might be found only by looking
 inward.  An  only child, sole heir to  a  lucrative and
 most beautiful estate, born to----"
   He would finish the sentence, he said, interrupting
 me.   "Born to a position of ignoble  ease and selfish
 enjoyment; nothing to do but to eat, drink, and sleep,
 to live like  a brute—and—and to die, and be buried,
 and to rot like a brute.   It was indeed glorious, glori-
 ous !—was it not?"
   He had  made  up his mind to go to Yale, he  said.
 Happiness was a thing graduated by the ability to com-
 prehend and the power" to execute. He would get soul-
 wealth as already he had earth-wealth;  would study
 and become a man,  and, ranking with men, would
 play a man's part.  At least, as a spirit of unrest pos-
 sessed him,  he would seek to quiet it.
   Then, again, he was impressed, he said, with a spirit
 of action.   Even were he satisfied to rest  in the luxury
 to which he had been born, would he not be guilty of
 a waste of life?  He believed so; he could not satisfy
 himself as  to  any peculiar right  possessed by him to
while away time idly while so many of his fellow-men
were crying  for help. 
182      ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
  Did I remember the parable of the talents? he asked.
As  then, so now; it  becomes  every man  to  put his
money at  usance.  If ten talents are his, he must in-
crease them other ten ; if he possess but five, other five
will be expected.   Feeling this, how might he dare act
the part of the " One talented," how might he excuse
himself when the reckoning should be demanded?
  It was beyond his  comprehension, he  said, how the
generality of mankind live as they do; it seemed to him
that life was treated  as  so much waste  matter, broken
up, cast aside,  trodden under  foot;  not one  in ten
thousand seemed  to have  the slightest appreciation of
the Wherein true life consisted.   Each hurried along as
if to gain the morrow was the object, as  if  the present
held nothing.  It was a  truth  that even the creative
might of God failed to attract admiration  ; had He not
conceived  and  created  a  paradise, and in  admiration
of his work called it good?  Yet, man passed it by
unheeding, or,  if perchance noticing,  only rolled up
his hypocritical eyes,  pronouncing anathemas upon it,
—upon the world, deemed by God so beautiful.  Why
were men so blind ?  He hoped  Heaven would gift him
with the desire and with the  ability to work the miracle
of opening their eyes.
  Did not  this last expression conflict, just a little, with
the doctrines in the sermon  he  had read  me? I asked.
In the one was inculcated  content, here he  favored
action.
  I  was dull of comprehension,  he answered.   My
objection  seemed scarcely worthy  reph.  Did  I not
perceive the  one  referred to unwarranted energy, the
other, to unholy sloth ? 
UTOPIA.                  T83
  So my friend, "seeking Utopia," went to Yale, and
four years—four, to me, very long years—separated us.
  How often, during the slow-moving months of sepa-
ration, did my mind revert to him,  and what I was
disposed  to view as  his peculiarities !  Often would  I
wonder what he should  be when again we met; if his
Utopia should be found.  Many and  many a time,  in
my better moods, have  I offered  supplications for his
welfare;  that his happiness might be secured, his search
crowned  with success.
      ******
  One evening, a week perhaps  after his return, we
were standing together  upon the veranda of his house,
when,  lifting my arm, he placed  it within his own,
inviting  me to a stroll.   He wanted to talk with me,
he said.   He  desired to compare  present views  with
some  he  had  entertained four years  back.   " They
were Quixotic, Darby, very.   I make the acknowledg-
ment  freely; that is, they were Quixotic as compared
with things as they exist, as all reforms are Quixotic.
Christ himself was  Quixotic, and for centuries  the
world  laughed  at his  disciples as  so many Sancho
Panzas ;  Quixotic, because he preached  good will  in
place of  hatred, peace instead of war; because,.know-
ing the beaten track to  be the wrong one, he stepped
aside,  marking  out a better.
   "Four years ago," he continued, " I apportioned to
myself the task  of teaching men how to live.  I thought
to be a reformer.   Convinced of the truthfulness of my
philosophy, I would preach against the prostitutions
of the  times, and inveigh against its follies.  And this,
this present,  Darby, was to  have  been  the starting- 
184      ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
time.   Strange how circumstances and relations alter
one's views.   I had not then made up my mind to pass
as a sort  of harmless, half-insane person, as a fanatic.
Indeed, I had  not  taken  into the account that such
position is necessarily entailed on the man who dares
step from the highway over which trudge the masses.
  "See," he went  on, "how the Spiritualist  of the
present day is denounced and ridiculed.*  Why? Be-
cause  they who mock  know him  as a fool ?  Nothing
of the kind.   The mockers are, as a general thing,  by
odds the greater fools ;  they mock at assertions which
they have not the independence to investigate, and,  of
course, not the capability to disprove; mocking, be-
cause  ridicule is the only weapon they may handle.
  "Suppose,"  continued  he, "that in the averments
made  by this  sect  exists  truth, that  now has  arrived
that cycle in which such communication as it teaches is
being  permitted,  is it  not startling,  most startling, to
think  that through  unbelief we  deny ourselves  the ad-
vantages and happiness of such communion ? and is it
not a  terrible reflection that  our disbelief drives away
souls torn from us rudely by death, and who now stand
mournfully at the door of our hearts, knocking longingly
for entrance?"
  "But," I answered him, "I have heard  you yourself
ridicule the doctrines of Swedenborg."
  "True; because  the chain of prejudice that binds
others  bound  me.  I laughed, as ridiculers mostly laugh,
meaningless,—as parrots laugh."
  "But the doctrine is absurd."
Referring to the Swedenborgian, 
UTOPIA
185
   "Possibly; yet the Bible, and, besides the Bible, all
 nature, teaches the omnipresence of God ; as well are
 we taught that the immortal  part of man is an emana-
 tion from—a part of—the Deity.   How, then, can the
 whole be  omnipresent without  the parts being in like
 condition?"
   I knew little about  the matter, and cared  less to
 know, I answered him.  I thought that possibly the
 less people should worry their brains about such things
 the better it  might be for them.  We had no right to
 look into  futurity; we should be content with the con-
 dition in which God has placed us.
   "True, Darby, most  true;  we should  not  ride  in
 carriages, because Providence has provided us with legs.
 We may not familiarize ourselves with hygiene, because
 Providence intends we shall sicken and die.   We have
 no right  to  lighten  burdens through machine labor,
 because law designs that by the sweat of one's brow is
 his bread  to be earned.   See how inconsistent we are,
 —what fools  we prove ourselves."
   I asked if at Yale he had been converted to the views
 of Swedenborg.
   " It has nothing to do with the consideration.  I only
 alluded to this  in  example.  It is of the world we are
 speaking.  I remarked, four years back, my intention of
 working for the good of my fellows.   I have now to re-
 mark  my knowledge of  a peculiarity existing with the
 people which points  the finger  of ridicule at him who
 suggests anything  for its improvement. All change must
 come  to the common mind through a general, and not a
special, voice, through an experience of good  or evil.
 He who runs ahead of  this experience, who philoso- 
186      ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

phizes, and from his  philosophy  draws deductions in
advance of his time, will best preserve his dignity and
secure his  comfort  by enjoying alone the  advantage.
Let him preach  to  the world his  doctrine,  he gets for
his pains  little  but contempt.   My  Utopia here has
vanished, Darby; I must seek it elsewhere."
   "You had better, then, look at home," I suggested.
   "And do cheerfully what the  hand findeth to  do;
that sounds quite reasonable.  But what finds my hand
to do which shall satisfy ?   What may still the spirit of
unrest which so urges me  to an unexplained labor ?  I
must do something; Heaven point out to me the path,
that I may step into it."
   His father owned at the time some  fifty male slaves,
full seven-eighths of whom were unable to  read for
themselves a single  line.  Was there  not here a great
work? I  inquired.   Suppose  he  should  employ  the
education  he had  gained  to  improve  and enlighten
twenty or thirty of the youngest of these men, and, on
their  coming into his possession, free and send them
missionaries to their countrymen.  I could  conceive, I
told him,  of no greater or worthier work, or one that,
in its  influence,  might be  more  important, whether
viewed in connection with the  affairs of time, or with
the things of all  life.
   He turned  away, unheeding, or not noticing,  the
suggestion.
   I ventured  to  continue the  subject: it  was to  the
designer and originator of a great work, rather than to
the laborers who executed the task, that belonged.
or should  belong, the credit.   And  surely he doing,
without whose consent or power nothing might  or 
UTOPIA.
187
 would be  done,  should  receive, as  undoubtedly he
 would deserve, all reward, whether it should be of con-
 science or estate.
   One of the  continents of the world,  I remarked,
 lay, as for ages it had lain, in the darkness of barbar-
 ism.   Its people,  having no light, elevated but little
 above the beasts  surrounding them, demanded, by the
 right of a common humanity, an assistance which should
 enable them to emerge from such a depressed condition.
 This assistance  might only come from the enlightened
 and more favored.  Was not this worthy his attention ?
 Would it not be a glorious task to light the torch whose
 flame, radiating and reflected, should dispel this dark-
 ness, and light  up with rays of intellectual  brightness
 the land so  long desolate?
   "We  will  defer a consideration of the  subject till
 some other time," he said, interrupting me.  We de-
 scended in silence the hill, on the summit of which we
 had been standing.
   "I  think  I will study medicine,  Darby.  What do
 you think of the idea?"  We had walked fully a mile
 before he spoke this.
   It was the profession I had some thought of for my-
 self, I answered him; but, so far, my ideas of the mat-
 ter were, I feared, rather indistinct.
   " I believe I wall study, Darby, and,  settling in some
 great  city, devote  freely my fortune  and abilities to
 the aid of the  needy." His face lighted up with enthu-
siasm.  * "This is  it, this is  it, Darby.   I feel it as in-
spiration.   I believe I have at last found Utopia."
  "I trust so," I said.   Perhaps my response might
have been more  hearty, for he turned  upon  me as if 
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN
the words had been ice.  I was, however, not entirely
unread as to the clinical advantages enjoyed in cittes by
the poor.   I knew that even as we spoke, existed, very
fully systematized, the noble charity now so freely sup-
ported by our different medical institutions,—a charity
which  permits no one  to  suffer where the aid of the
finest talent and erudition may assist.
   I may be permitted to pay the tribute of my regard
to this cause.
   I  premised, it will be remembered, that to-night  I
would write as memories came about me.  Let me, then,
for a single moment digress.
   In most great cities are now to be found those silent
charities known as Clinics, supported almost entirely, if
not wholly, by college faculties, or practitioners of the
healing art.  These clinics are divided into specialties;
medical,  surgical, obstetrical, ophthalmic, and  others.
Demands made at the several institutions will secure to
the poor patient such services as may be needed, from the
very highest of the faculty.   Operations  are performed,
medicine and attendants furnished, the  closest consid-
eration given  to every want,  and all without the slight-
est idea or hope of reward.   It is charity, the offspring
of duty, and, like the good Samaritan, pours balm into
the  wounds   of  every wayside sufferer, asking not
whether he be friend or foe, Jew or Samaritan.
   Perhaps the amount of time, means,  'and personal
exertion expended in a single year in  these  services
might scarcely be  realized  by the people.   It  is, I am
very sure, far beyond  any estimate ordinarily enter-
tained.  May the "heart-warmth" engaged in this noble
work never grow old !  The  poor owe  to the clinical 
UTOPIA.
189
 system a debt which their warmest gratitude alone may
 repay.   That people of means  are  found not unfre-
 quently to take  advantage of this good, designed alone
 for the  really poor, is unfortunately the objection to
 the  system.  How it is to be obviated is a question
 now receiving attention.
   I said that I answered my friend coolly, and that my
 indifference  seemed as ice to his enthusiasm.  How-
 ever, the October of the succeeding year witnessed our
 matriculation together into  the  University.   I pass
 rapidly on.
   Half the first course had not been completed before
 I perceived that, in the face of things as they existed,
 the  new-found  Utopia of  my  friend was vanishing.
 The free service which at  first  had  loomed up as the
 embodiment of  charity, was rapidly sinking to a level
 with the many others apiece with it.  I felt that soon
 again he would need to renew the search for his ideal.
   I  concluded right.  He  started his queries on  the
 voyage home. We were standing, the first evening out,
 upon the after-deck of the  packet on which  we were
 sailing, watching  the receding  land.  " There, it is
 gone," he exclaimed, as the last  point faded into the
 horizon, " the land is gone; the  Utopia it promised is
 gone with it. Ah, Darby, is  there on earth no Utopia?"
  I repeated to him the words of the Quaker.
  "True, true."   He dropped his head, as I have  re-
 marked was his habit.  I left him  to  his musings, and
 walked to the bow of the vessel.
     *       *       *       *       * .      *
  My friend went  not back to college.   I did not ex-
pect he would.  It was not medical education he sought, 
190
ODD HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN.
but a something,—a Utopia,—an idea.   He found not
this : why should he have returned ?
  I was surprised one afternoon, some two years later,
to have placed  in my hands  by our college janitor a
letter from Trinton.  It was quite an event; for, while
we were the best  of friends, such was  his unconquer-
able repugnance to letter-writing that the receipt of
a letter from him was a matter of such rarity as to be
worthy of note.  This letter informed me of his inten-
tion to invest a portion of his fortune in mercantile
pursuits.   " I need  excitement," he wrote.   "I con-
clude that without some  busy object whereupon to
exhaust the activity of my mind I can  never expect to
quit myself of the spirit of unrest which so distresses
me.  This is all I need ;  I am convinced of it.  I start
up as one  awakened from a dream;  I have dreamt too
long. The mass of mankind find content in a plodding
routine.   I have  reviled this  plodding too  severely.
As others  seem happy while I  am miserable, the others
must be right, I wrong.   I  will work with the rest."
  I dropped  the letter  in very surprise.   What could
thus more greatly than ever have  deceived my friend?
Merchandise, indeed ! what could such a one as he do
with merchandise ?   The idea was  absurd.  A person
of his  dreamy character to enter a  pursuit demanding
for  success such concentration of  energy, great and
continued earnestness,  and unwavering industry—if  I
had not been so annoyed I could have laughed outright
at the folly.
  "Of course," continued he, " you will wonder at
this determination.   I assume that you will.   You will
condemn, perhaps: this, however,  would fall on  my 
UTOPIA.
I9I
 ear unheeded.   I must begin  to  live.   Life is rapidly
 hastening from me, and as yet I have accomplished no-
 thing, absolutely nothing. The reflection almost drives
 me to despair. Is it,—I ask myself the question a  hun-
 dred times each day,—is it to be thus until the end ?
 May I do nothing at all ?  is there  no work for me?
   " I went to Yale to find my work,  -to the university;
 but did I find it ? I am here to-day apparently farther
 from the  object than ever.  I sometimes feel like casting
 the blame on  God.   Why was I created with this sus-
 ceptibility?  Why am I haunted by this constant desire
 to work, and nothing given me to do ?   I am never at
 ease for a single moment.   Do I lie down in sleep, there
 come to  me visions of distress, calling for  relief.   Do
 I walk, or drive,  or hunt,  condemnation of the hours
 I am misspending seems  to  look on me  from  every
 cloud.  You ask me, then, why the calls are unheeded.
 Oh, I don't know;  I don't know.   It is the charge of
 vacillation, perhaps,  which I fear,—the dread that it
 will be said of me, as it is said of every man who steps
 from  the  path, he is  a little insane,—a fanatic,—an
 enthusiast,— a dreamer.  I find  I  have  no independ-
 ence,  none at all.  Pray for me, Darby, pray for me ; I
 feel like  one around whose lips the  waters of Lethe
 are  bubbling."
  I shut  the  letter.  I had no  desire to  read  farther.
 Poor  Trin ! how few comprehend  such a character as
 his!  I  understood,  however, and  appreciated him.
 I think I am skilled in such direction of the vagarious.
 How many, who in these pages shall commune with the
sentiments he utters, are in nature akin with him!  You
 yourself have  felt all  this, perhaps still feel  it.   The 
ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.
better spirit  strives, and long has striven, for suprem-
acy.   You have, time and again, caught up the armor,
almost determined to buckle it on.  You recall many a
Sunday  morning,  when, in religious  mood, you  have
walked  towards the church, determined that the day
was to witness your regeneration ;  you would be found,
thereafter, very regular in  your attendance,—so you
vowed to yourself.   You remember how, feeling thus,
you  have  gone into  the family-pew, and a shower of
grace has seemed to descend upon you.  You have won-
dered why so long you cheated  yourself of  such se-
renity.  So all day Monday have  you retained the
fervor;  Tuesday and Wednesday it  has lingered with
you, but with the  Thursday came a temptation.   You
were not strong enough; you faltered.  The next Sun-
day, the pew, as usual, was vacant.  You spent the day
uncomfortably  at home, or, perhaps,, whistled your dog
to your side, and, taking up your hat,  wandered off,
trying to get away  from yourself.
   You  have thought much of life; about what it is to
live.  Fully have you  satisfied  yourself that the mere
provision  for the  body is, or should  be, the  least part
of a man's  concern.   There have dawned upon  your
comprehension the requirements of a higher life,—the
soul life.   You have asked  yourself  a thousand  times
what you  should  do;  long have you been wanting
to do something.  You wonder why it  is you should
not long ago have  been at work ; why you have been so
wavering.   You feel a  kind of contempt for your weak-
ness.  There comes, however, buoying you up, a sud-
den  vow of resolution.  You will be weak no longer.
You will be a man in the sight of Heaven, as you are  a 
UTOPIA.
193
man in the sight of your fellows.   You will commence
the coming hour with a good work.  So, under the in-
spiration, you start forth, your  heart all warmth, your
energy all ablaze.
  You go, perhaps, to some miserable dwelling you
may have encountered in your walks.  You think it
would be a noble commencement to regenerate the in-
mates of such a tumble-down place ; you have no doubt
the people are of a piece with their dwelling ; you knock
at the door, and, in answer to a rough greeting, pass in.
It is a very forbidding-looking place, you think.  Yet the
fervor which has so far accompanied you deserts you not.
You hesitate  for a moment as to how you shall  broach
the subject of your visit.   It strikes you suddenly that
the bodies of these people need food and raiment quite
as much as the soul—perhaps more.  At any rate, you
conceive that it would be useless to talk of philosophical
comforts in the face of such earthly distress ;  the reflec-
tion undecides you as to whether or not you shall speak
the words of your message.  Finally, however, you con-
clude that it would be as well  to return home, and,
providing the needed  comforts, send  them, to return
yourself at some  more suitable time.   So, dropping a
few dollars into the hands of a wan-looking woman you
take to be the mother, you go away.
  You do not return, however, as you had contem-
plated.  A few days, and your mood has changed.  A
kind of selfish  indifference has come over you.   You
think it better becomes a man  to attend to business,
leaving the gentle  duties of life to the attention of
women.   If you find the money for your wife's chari-
ties, it is quite enough.  You subscribe, also, to at least
                        *3 
ODD HOURS  OF  A PHYSICIAN.
half a dozen funds.  You are sure that these people will
not be permitted  to suffer while so many are ready to
assist.  If the people do want, you are sure it can only
be from fault of their own.  So, stultifying your better
nature, you go back to your usual round, to continue in
it until another good mood shall come pleading.
  Your business engagements permit of little  leisure.
You do not get much time to think.  You come home,
however, some evening rather  earlier than usual.  You
have  felt  all day  disgusted with the world, and  with
the things of the world.   Nothing has  gone right
with  you.   There is  a feeling  stealing  over  you de-
nouncing the vanity of your life.   You feel the denun-
ciation to be very just.  You draw your  chair to the
grate, and  fall into a reverie.   What is  the use, you
think, of toiling and  battling for that which  is truly
neither meat  nor drink?  It comes up very vividly that
life, as it is generally spent, is but so much waste.  You
wonder at  the goodness which bears  so patiently with
the ingratitude of  your kind.   The parable of  the fig-
tree comes before your  mind.  Your thoughts revert
immediately to yourself.   You have lived thirty, forty,
fifty years, and never yet has there been fruit gathered
from  your branches.  You shrink involuntarily, as if
you feared the descending axe.  You  are lost in aston-
ishment that you have been spared so long.  You think
yourself the most  ungrateful of ingrates, much more
ungrateful than other men, because, judging from your
constant  compunctions, you doubt if other men  have
been watered and cultured with the care and love which
have attended you.
  A very despairing mood comes upon you.  You feel 
UTOPIA.
195
that you are,  or should be, outside  the  pale of  the
deserving; it  is of no use to make new  resolutions;
you remember how weak you are.   Have you not  a
hundred times resolved and re-resolved,  and a hun-
dred times broken the resolutions ? What, you ask your-
self, is the  use of fresh vows?  You doubt if it would
not be but  as casting insult in the face of God.  You
ought, like the fig-tree, to be cut down.   You almost
wish  you could be, that you  might know the  worst.
Why should you longer cumber the ground ? You will
never bear fruit, never; you  are convinced of this.
You are in very great distress at your condition.  You
offer up  a  very  earnest prayer.   Why will God and
your good  angel not  help you ?  You wonder, as  the
mood changes a little, why you should be denied  the
strength  you so need and so crave.  You want to be
useful; it is your  highest desire; but unless there is
interposed some special providence, you might as well
give up the battle.   The spirit  is willing, most willing,
but the flesh  is weak.   So  you think on, think and
think, until, slumber coming over your  senses, imper-
ceptibly and by degrees the thoughts are shut out, and
thus the good mood is gone,—gone as it came.
  There  come to you  also times when  you are very
ambitious, very desirous of accomplishing some  great
and  worthy work.  You read of men, mighty  men,
who, comet-like, have blazed over and  illumined  the
life-sky, attracting all  eyes,' exciting all  admiration.
You do not see why you also may not so shine; it would
be glorious, lofty, noble, you think.
  So, measuring yourself with the precedents afforded,
you plume your wings for the flight:  you will fly to  the 
ODD HOURS  OF A  PHYSICIAN.
pinnacle, you think.   In contemplation of the coming
success, your soul seems lighting up with a celestial fire.
You feel that it begins to blaze, that it has entered the
arteries of your body,  and is  pouring  its  undiluted
streams upon your brain.
  You catch up your  pen; the moment of inspiration
shall not be lost.  You  write, write; words crowd for
utterance.   You are writing immortal lines,—lines that
shall glow brighter  and brighter, as the eyes that first
gloated over them may  wax dimmer and dimmer,—as
the hand that  penned them shall fall  more  and more
into dust.  You firmly believe this: at length you are
accomplishing a life-work.   "Happy me! happy me!"
you exclaim.
  Rapidly, and still more  rapidly, you write; the ex-
citement upon you is increasing to absolute distraction.
At length you  throw down the pen.  You may not add
a single word: the strain,  the  song, is  perfect.   You
are deliriously happy.   You feel  you  must hasten out
into the broadness of space ; the circumference of the
room wherein  you write seems crowding you.   So out
you go;  every  one  you  meet recognizes  instinctively,
you feel, the inspiration  that was upon you.
  Rapidly you pass from the close streets into the open
freeness of the country.  You must move quickly; you
are far too  excited to  remain still even for a single
moment.  The whole morning you walk,—the whole
day,—and  night has settled down over  the  lanes and
fields ere you find yourself sufficiently composed to re-
turn to your home.
  You feel, as  you  seat yourself before the tempting
supper, very tired, very  hungry;  the long  walk  has 
                       UTOPIA.                  IQ7

 quite animalized  you.   The  evening, however, has in
 store a treat which shall refresh you.  You may not
 overlook this.  You will  draw up the arm-chair,  you
 say,  and in reading over your manuscript re-enjoy the
 ecstasy of the morning.   Happy anticipation !  it helps
 even to appease your appetite.   You  can but hurry to
 the treat.
   On the table, by the side of your precious production,
 your servant has thrown one of the so-called  literary
 papers.  You will read  just a little in  this first; it will
 serve, you think, to sharpen the appetite for what is to
 come.  Your eye falls on a poem by Marie----.   You
 pass  to  an  essay by  Wilhelm----, to a  moral  story
 by Roberto----.   Noms de plume, attached to wishy-
 washy nonsense, meet your eyes wherever on the page
 they  rest.   You throw  down the paper in sheer  dis-
 gust.   You think how more than strange it is that people
 should spend precious time in laboring to exhibit them-
 selves as fools.
   You begin to lose confidence in the heaven-inspired
 effusion of the morning.    An impression comes stealing
 upon  you that, with the others, you also may have been
 doing what you could   to  make  yourself ridiculous.
 Your  own article is signed "Raphael;"  it seems,  this
 last at least, very absurd.   What could your friends do
 but smile, if they knew that you, the steady merchant
 of their acquaintance, were "Raphael,"—neglecting
 ledgers and day-books to  poetize ?  Confidence in your
 call is going very fast.
  You unroll the manuscript, however. It is strange,
but it starts not with the  fire of the  morning.   You
wonder what has become of the vitality that existed in 
198      ODD  HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
it.   You have  read only half through the page when
you  lay it down.  There is a growing conviction  that
you  are of a class with the Maries, the Wilhelms,  and
the Robertos.  You take up the paper and cast it  into
the  fire.  You  laugh a laugh of contempt at your
weakness, and thus, as the paper turns to ashes, your
aspirations turn  to air.  The mood is gone,—gone as
the many others have gone.
  Do you recognize these mind phases?  You will  not,
then, blame my friend.  You will not ridicule  his search
after Utopia.  He lives as  you live, as I live,  only  in a
more intensified degree.
  As you live, as I live, that  is,  always  about  to do
something,—never  accomplishing  anything.   So I am
sure he will  live.  As you and I, so he, so all  of us, will
sink down  into a common  dust,  leaving  perhaps no
sign.  Heaven forgive us, but it does  seem that all our
strivings and battlings are about as the strivings  and
battlings of the moats in  a sunbeam,—coming to as
little.
  I  need not tell you that, within a year, my friend
left,  at great pecuniary loss, his business venture.   You
can only have anticipated  this.  Neither need I trace
his various changes; they were many.   Over  the earth
he has wandered, a spirit of unrest;  has ever sought,
never found;  and  now, with  Richter's old man, he
looks back wistfully over the rich harvest-fields of  life,
out of which he has brought nothing. 
IN  THE  COUNTRY.
 "TN my garden  I spend my days, in my library I
   J.   spend my nights," says Alexander Smith.  "My
 interests I divide between my geraniums and my books.
 With  the flower I am in the present; with the book I
 am in the past.  I go into my library, and all history
 unrolls before me.   I breathe the morning air of the
 world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it;
 while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of night-
 ingales and to the laugh of Eve.  The garden I love
 more than any place on earth.   I like to pace its grav-
 eled walks;  to sit in the moss-house, which is warm and
 cozy as a bird's  nest, and wherein twilight dwells at
 mid-day.   My garden, with  its silence, and the pulses
 of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations,
 affects me  like sweet music.  Care stops at the gates,
 and gazes at me wistfully  through the bars.  Among
 my flowers  and trees  nature takes me into her own
 hands, and I breathe freely as the first man."
  Have you read, my good reader, Alexander Smith's
 garden-smelling  book  " Dreamthorp" ?  No?  Well,
 you know what Alexander  Smith is; his book is what
 he is.   Dreamthorp is a dreamy village, a place away
 off from the track of traffic, where the contentions and
 disquietude  of the world  have grown old  before  the
sound of the turmoil reaches the retirement of the hill-
circled hamlet.  " Upon a summer evening, about the
                                      ( r99 ) 
200
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
hour of eight," writes the poet, " I first beheld Dream-
thorp, with its westward-looking windows painted by
sunset,  its children  playing  in the single straggling
■street,  the  mothers knitting at  the open  doors,  the
fathers, standing  about in long white blouses, chatting
or smoking ; the  great tower of the  ruined castle rising
high into the rosy air, with a whole troop of swallows
—by distance made  as small as gnats—skimming about
its  rents and fissures;—when I first beheld all this, I
felt instinctively that my knapsack  might be taken off
my shoulders, that my tired feet might  wander no more,
that at last, on the planet, I had found a home.  From
that evening I have dwelt here, and the only journey I
am like now to make is the very inconsiderable one, so
far, at least, as distance is concerned, from the house in
which I live to the graveyard beside the ruined castle.
There,  with the former inhabitants  of  the place, I trust
to sleep quietly enough,  and Nature will draw over our
heads her coverlet of green sod,  and tenderly tuck us
in, as a mother  her sleeping ones, so that no sound
from the  world  shall ever  reach  us, and no sorrow
trouble us any more.''
   This is  very pretty and  very dreamy.   Indeed, it
makes it felt as a matter  to be regretted that the name
of the author interferes with our calling it Smithian, a
euphonism which  should best express it.  The facts in
the case I imagine to be  these.  Our author, being off
from  Edinburgh on his summer excursion,  tired out and
disgusted with everything and everybody, stumbled upon
this  quiet  spot, which, in  its contrast to  that  he  had
just left, entranced and enraptured him.   He boarded,
I am confident; at any rate,  he had no garden  tended 
IN THE COUNTRY.
20T
by his own hands, otherwise he must have discovered
that weeds and flowers grow together in the same bed,
and  have found  the  consideration of the weeds forced
upon him, a matter which he nowhere alludes to in his
most charming of charming books.

  A doctor may be nothing if he is not practical,—not,
however, to the exclusion of the poetical,—but the utile
et dulce  are as  his  gig-horses, and he harnesses  them
always together.   I  desire  to  make  this essay as one
would make a prescription,—that is, to a useful end.
I know the hazy mellowness of midsummer afternoons,
dreaming dreams in the porch after dinner; and I know,
also, the aspect of the matter which grows and gathers
the dinner.  Dreamthorp may tell you about the first.
My prose will  not be found amiss on the  other side.
- Imprimis, I  do commend you to the country.  Green
fields and  trees are  not,  as pronounced by Socrates,
" eternally the same."  As God is greater than man,
so are his works those which must the most continu-
ously delight and entrance us.  A great many matters,
however, intrude themselves in a consideration of coun-
try living. To  go out of the town with the idea that cares
and troubles belong alone to the city, and that country
is all Ambrosia and Arcadia, is simply nonsense.   I am
certainly not far wrong in asserting that country moving
is effected, as a rule,  with  less judgment than any other
important step taken by a man, and hence the frequent
disappointment.
     " Hackneyed in business, weary at that oar
       Which thousands once fast chained to, quit no more,
       But which, when life at ebb runs weak and low,
       All wish,  or seem to wish, they could forego; 
202 •
ODD HOURS  OF  A  PHYSICIAN.
       The statesman, lawyer, man of trade,
       Pants for the refuge of some rural shade,
       Where, all his long anxieties forgot,
       Amid the charms of a sequestered spot,
       Or recollected only to gild o'er
       And add a smile to what was sweet before.
       He may possess the joys he thinks he sees,
       Lay his old age upon the lap of ease,
       Improve the remnant of his wasted span,
       And, having lived a trifler, die a man."
       .   . .  " 'Tis well if looked for at so late a day,
       In the last scene of such a senseless play,
       True wisdom will attend his feeble call,
       And grace his action ere the curtain fall.
       Souls that have long despised their heavenly birth,
       Their wishes all impregnated with earth,
       For threescore years employed with ceaseless care
       In catching smoke and feeding upon air,
       Conversant only with the ways of men,
       Rarely redeem the short remaining ten.
       Inveterate habits choke the unfruitful heart,
       Their fibers penetrate  its tenderest part,
       And, draining its nutritious powers to feed
       Their noxious growth, starve every better seed."

   Come  now and  let us have a formal and  reasonable
talk about a matter which may have so much of com-
fort or  discomfort in  it,  as  you  happen  to manage
matters.   I  take it for granted,  you see, that country
living is in  your thoughts.   Every man with life and
freshness in him, and every woman too, for that matter,
has a country dream.   It  happened  me to be born in
the  country, and to be there  reared; and  I have not
by any  means  been  without the  experiences  which
afford one a judgment  in  comparing  country places
and situations,  as well as their advantages and disadvan-
tages as viewed in association with the town.   So I feel 
IN THE COUNTRY.
203
that  a consultation  together  cannot  be without its
benefit.
   In  the  first place, what is the idea?   For what do
you propose going into  the country?  It is because
you are tired of the city.   Don't go, then.   It is be-
cause you feel restless, and scarcely know what to do
with yourself.   Don't go.   Because you have exhausted
all kinds of things and long for a change.  Don't go.
   Two classes of people only, we may commence our
homily by asserting, find  their  requirements met in
the country,—the poor man, who here gets the  most
from  his  little, and the philosopher,  who is brought
closest in communion with all  most worthy his study.
An assertion that is least without fear of successful con-
tradiction is, that a.man  to enjoy country living  must
have developed his religious instincts; by which, how-
ever,  is  not  meant  Presbyterianism,  Romanism, or
Quakerism, but that he has garnered within  him  that
something which  allies him with  the good, the quiet,
and the simple.  A man with  ill instincts,  or selfish
motives, may not but be,  on principle, as much out of
place  in the country as is a bad and ill-bred man in
the company of the virtuous and refined.   Not but  it is
recognized that ill-bred and vicious  men are found in
the country, enough  of  them  unfortunately, but  the
viciousness is after the kind of a horse or ox, and the
people will be found of an order in whom appreciation
of pleasures above  the  corporeal has  little existence.
Than  these, no class of persons are more to be pitied ;
they are surrounded with the richest  fruits of life with-
out palate to know or  taste them ;  they live the  span
of existence with the wine untasted. 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN
  A parody has been written on " Five Acres Enough,"
entitled  "Five Years  Enough," implying  that  such
length of time is found quite sufficient for the generality
of people to get enough of country living.   Well, this
is very true ;  it is certainly a very common experience.
But is the fault with the country or with the residents?
  A man whose  habits and  long routine of  living
addict him to the  theatre and the  midnight convivial
gathering, whose inclinations seldom lead him towards
books  and never to contemplation, this man, ennuye
and blase, buys for himself a farm, and at a blow sun-
ders himself from his  old associations.  A few  weeks
pass,  during which he is comfortable and interested
enough; but how long, in reason  and common sense,
should dissatisfaction stay away?—seldom over a month;
it would be even remarkable if, in the course of a year,
such a man should not be willing to sacrifice anything
to get away from what he can and may only see as the
stupidity of his situation; it is naturally the common
experience with this class.
  Another man, with greater pretensions perhaps, starts
by  building  for himself  an extensive establishment,
surrounds himself with greenhouses, so lays out his
whole domain that hirelings without number are found
necessary to that  order without which  the  place is
nothing.  Very soon,  from morning  until night,  this
man commences  to hear  complaints, commotion is
everywhere,—horses go  lame, cows  dry  up, grapes
mildew,  fences are broken  down, roofs  leak, grass-
crops are destroyed by the floods, the wheat rusts; in
short, so many are the mishaps, the result, all of them,
of his inexperience, that in despair and disgust he is 
                 IN  THE COUNTRY.             2o5

 glad when the whole thing is taken off his hands at half
 the first cost.
   Still another  class  is like my friend M, who, with  a
 family just springing into the requirements of society,
 took a place in  the country so retired  that only once  a
 week,  as I learned, did any vehicle pass his house, and
 that a neighbor's ox-cart.  In winter, it was a long and
 dreary wade or drive through snow and mud, ankle-
 deep,  to get to the outlet of communication with  the
 world.  Now, my friend is a man who, for thirty years,
 had never  appeared upon the street with even so much
 as  a stain  on his immaculate patent-leathers, and  his
 professional hands had never, so far as I know, planted
 a single bushel  of potatoes.   There was an  occasion
 on which,  as his friends tell, being  in rural mood, he
 did dig up his  side-yard and  bury a peck, but  from
 this, evidently, both  hands and memory  had long  re-
 covered.   It was certainly not to  be wondered  at,
 then, that  when this  gentleman returned at  nightfall
 to  his  lonely domicil,  rain-  and mud-bedraggled,  he
 should have felt a certain degree of disgust, and when
 to  such  persuasion were added  the  complaints of  his
 family, quite  as much shut  up and  isolated as  the
 monks of St. Bernard, one would not incline to blame
 him or to think  it unwise that the latter half of the first
 winter sent him  back  to the town rejoicing.
  Another  class still  is that  one which, knowing no-
 thing about farming,  goes out with the expectation of
a speedy transmutation  of every grain  of wheat, corn,
and oats into gold.  Between seedtime and harvest one
is apt to find many moles and weevils; so these come
back and spend the rest of their lives in grumbling and 
 206       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

 fault-finding.  I knew a capitalist  of this  class who
 bought a dairy farm of three hundred acres, together
 with its stock of forty cows, but from the day of the
 purchase his carriage was seen almost continually upon
 the road, or else he was to be sought under the big oak
 in front of the village tavern.   The man who acted as
 his overseer lost him twenty cows in a little over that
 number of months; the gentleman sold the place which
 had cost him forty thousand, for twenty thousand dol-
 lars.   His friends say that he has not yet ceased to rail
 at country and country living.
   Going into the  country is like going into anything
 else;  there must be a common-sense foundation, and
 the moving is to be duly pondered.
   To consider a country movement, many  things are to
 be taken into the reckoning ; if you have had no experi-
 ence you cannot possibly have any judgment about the
 matter.
   First and foremost of all the  things you are  to  con-
 sider, is the healthfulness of a situation.  The brightest
 house  and cheeriest  outlook in nature  will be made
 somber by the constant presence of a doctor, and the
 wandering around of an unseen, but ever-felt, specter,
 in the shape of miasm.  I  have this moment  in  my
 mind's eye a situation of this kind.   I thought, when
 first I  saw it, that  it was just exactly  what I had been
 years   in  seeking, and  without  doubt should  most
greedily have possessed myself of it, but that I learned
the owner had lost three wives  on the premises from
the same  endemic influence; this, while  it  might be
an added recommendation to a  man cursed with a ter-
magant, would hardly be such to one who might  own 
IN THE COUNTRY.
207
 an angel.   Unless,  therefore, you have special reason
 for preferring a malarious residence, let not the beauty
 of a place seduce you to its occupancy.
   We want, then, it is seen, to know something about
 malaria  and  its associations.   Malaria—malus, bad ;
 aria, air—means, in  its common definition, simply bad
 air.   Miasma is its  synonym,— infecting effluvia float-
 ing in  the air.  Because, as everybody knows, certain
 places have always  chills  and fever  associated  with
 them, and other places have not, it follows that between
 such places there  is some fact of difference;  this  fact
 is the  presence  of miasm,  a cause of disease, having a
 signification associative with the locality.
   Miasm is* like the  fiend which does its black work in
 darkness.  No man  has as  yet  seen it closely enough
 to allow him to describe its form, neither has science
 been able to catch  its likeness; like  everything  else,
 however, by its work is it known, and by its associations
 learned of.
   Without entering  on any discussion which shall tend
 towards a definition of miasm scientifically,—this would
 interest a doctor only,—it is  enough to say that the
 poison  is an emanation which arises from vegetable
 matter subjected to  alternations of heat and moisture,
 and thus subjected,  with  a continuous concentration,
 which decomposes faster than neighboring atmospheric
 or vegetative influences can neutralize or carry off.
   Miasm may be evolved,  yet exhibit  no ill effects on
 man.   If the evolution, as may well be  the  case, cor-
responds with antagonizing influences, then man  may
perhaps only be the better, not the worse  for  it,—as
thus  is  made a  fertilizer  which correlates  itself  into 
 208      ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

 fresh life for his  support.   Where,  on the contrary,
 miasm is in excess of the immediate correlative influ-
 ences, then man and beast both suffer.
   We have now our logical premises by which to judge
 of the material premises.
   Vegetation, heat, and moisture:  these are the three
 active agents  in the production of  miasma, to which a
 fourth is to be added, in the influence of non-drainage,
 either by the way  of the atmosphere or running water.
 The strongest example of a malarious locality one might
 make would be in  suggesting a marshy valley in a tropU
 cal climate, so overrun  with fixed water as to destroy a
 prolific vegetation, yet  not covering it enough to pro-
 tect the garbage from the putrefying influences of the
 sun; this valley, in turn, so environed with hills as to
 shut off a circulation of air.  Let this be taken as the
 type of a malarial situation.   Compare with it the place
 you may be called to look  at, and see  to what  extent
 it shades off from  the example.  Consider, first, there
 is to  be vegetation; second, moisture; third,  heat;
 fourth, non-drainage.    If a  place is without vegetable
 product, you might not refuse it because of a fear of
 intermittent or malarial  fever; that is, so far as the place
 in itself is concerned, although, as in a moment we shall
 see,  you might be worse off, as regards the poison, than
 your neighbor occupying  the premises that originate
 it.   Let us  suppose A to live upon the very verge of
 a miasm-producing region.   B, his  nearest neighbor,
 lives two miles away, in the midst of fields of roses and
 fruit-bearing trees.  A  is healthy.   B  is  always, in
season, sick from  the malarial poison.   What  is  the
explanation ?  From the side upon which A lives blows 
IN THE COUNTRY.
209
 a continuous current of air towards the house of B;  the
 poison is blown away from A, it deluges  the rooms of
 B.   Just as  the atmosphere bears the pollen of plants,
 so does it carry the palmellae, or whatever it may be,
 of miasm.   Let us make another  illustration :  B looks
 at and admires property, the background  of which  is a
 belt  of wood.   A, the owner, truthfully declares that a
 case  of malarial poisoning was never known on  the
 premises.   B, looking alone at  the mediate  surround-
 ings, makes  the purchase and removes to  it his family.
 As winter comes around, B sits at his window and finds
 amusement,  not, however, untinctured with  regret, in
 looking at C, the owner of the belt of wood, cutting it
 away.  As  the trees fall, it is seen that  beyond  is a
 marshy fen.   The coming autumn B and all his family
 are driven away from the new  home, and now it is seen
 too late that the wood was a wall  that kept away the
 poison evolved by the marsh.   Cases without number
 of which this is an example might be referred to.
   It may readily be conceived  that malarious situations
 exist  where  the miasm is not  sufficient in quantity to
 produce the effects of intermittent or bilious fever, yet
 where there is quite enough of it to keep a man  feeling
 good  for nothing,—he is not sick, but he is never well.
 I know of one country seat of this kind,  where forty
 thousand dollars would not pay for the improvements
 put upon it,  and where, I am  free to declare, I would
 not think of living, even if, as an inducement, a free
 gift were made to me of the place.
  Ground newly broken is not unapt to generate miasm.
This results from  the sudden  exposure of  long-buried
vegetable matter to the influences of moisture and heat.
                        14 
2IO
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
It usually, however, quickly wears itself out, and  is
not to  be deemed an  objection  to  the  health  of a
place.   Pioneers almost universally suffer from endemic
intermittents.  One may generally protect himself, how-
ever, from the  temporary discomfort, by  a  daily dose
of the red Peruvian  bark,—as much  of the powder as
will lie upon a half-dime silver piece.   Living, on one
occasion,  through  compulsion, in  a neighborhood of
this kind, where almost  everybody was shaking, I pre
served the most robust and unaffected health by taking
a wineglassful, twice or thrice daily, of the following
combination :  of the red bark I took one ounce, and
of Virginia snakeroot half  the quantity ; these  were
put together into  one and  a  half pints of water; the
infusion was placed  upon a  stove, and allowed to sim-
mer down to one pint;  this, when  cold, was strained,
and to it was added one pint of Madeira wine.   I may
say, also,  as a sort of addendum, that this combination
will seldom fail in breaking  any ordinary  intermittent,
particularly if,  in  plethoric  subjects,  its exhibition  is
preceded  by some gentle cathartic medicine.
  Besides miasm,  there are  other atmospheric associa-
tions  to be considered.   I  recall this moment a dis-
tillery,  where attempt was  made  to  get  clear of the
mash  by throwing it into a running  stream, with the
anticipation of  its being carried to the river, but where,
on the contrary, it became a stagnant putrescent mass,
impregnating the  air for miles with its  unendurable
odor,  and inducing such a typhoid tendency that  half
the country-side were down  with low forms of fever.
  It is not desirable  to have as one's next neighbor a
careless, slovenly man, whose business is the raising of 
IN THE COUNTRY.
2£ t
 hogs.  Few things are more intolerably disgusting than
 the odor from such  an establishment, particularly when
 the wind concentrates the fragrance upon your parlor,
 dining-room,  or  chamber.   Cologne, patchouly,  and
 mignonette only intensify the disgust of  the situation;
 even the latest improved atomizer fails utterly to help
 the matter.
   There are, again,  situations where the filth and debris
 of sewage exercise  a poisoning influence on  the  sur-
 rounding atmosphere.   This has its principal  applica-
 tion  to the neighborhood of cities and towns drained
 into adjoining streams.   London  and the Thames  fur-
 nish a notable illustration.   A cove, attractive as it is,
 may be of such character as  to prove a  receptacle for
 the river debris of dead fish and other offal, which shall
 make untenable the charming cottage upon the bank.
 A deep cove  has  rarely healthy surroundings, the cir-
 culation of  its water being  too  sluggish  to insure
 freshness and vitality.  Water, like blood, to be healthy,
 must be in a state  of continuous movement.
   A non-observant man, purchasing a beautiful stream,
 may be  completely  disappointed  by finding  that  the
 opacity of its water  depends  upon a factory, of which
 he  had never  so  much  as heard;  he may not  let  his
 children bathe in  it, for  he may well  fear for them  the
 fate of the fish he  so plentifully finds lying dead upon
 the shore.  A poisoned rural stream is as sad a sight as
 it has grown to be  a common one.  Always, before buy-
 ing water, know what there is up stream, or  what there
 is likely to be.
  A graveyard too near, and on a higher plane than the
place proposed  to be purchased,  may not be without 
212
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
the pale of consideration.  A spring is simply a surface
drain, and yours might or might not get its water through
the cemetery; not that necessarily such water would have
any  actual  impregnation,  yet  it  might.    No  filter,
however, equals a  rod of earth,  and your visitor the
chemist might be  the last to object to drinking  from
your well.  The neighborhood of cemeteries has,  how-
ever,  been thought to be  objectionable,  by  men  of
judgment, on account of exhalations which they infer
must  necessarily be in a state of constant passage into
the atmosphere.   This would be  most apt  to apply in
the case of  old yards, where  graves are  necessarily
made shallow, and where, from long use, the earth is
no longer capable of  disinfecting the decomposing re-
mains.  An offset, however, would exist in prolific veg-
etation, this appropriating what the earth might not.
   A greater  objection to proximity with a cemetery
might be thought by many to be  the melancholy  asso-
ciations.  This would depend  very  much on  circum-
stances.   A graveyard might not be  the most  cheerful
outlook for a fashionable, frivolous person,  but to one
of reflective and philosophic habits it might readily
prove the gateway to his  most enrapturing thoughts;
just  as one  person is entranced and upraised by the
grand and solemn strains  of an  organ, while by the
same  chords another  is put into  bed with  a fit of the
vapors.   Unless the heart is very much out of the way,
the cemetery is not by any means to be considered as
without attractions which  might render it  a desirable
feature rather than the reverse.   If, indeed,  there were
no other reason, and one should come to love the new
home very much, it would be a kind  of sad  recommen- 
IN THE COUNTRY.
213
 dation to feel that in death he would not be far separated
 from it, that children and wife would still be near him,
 and  that  the tear or the flower would  each day hallow
 his memory.
                      " With fairest flowers,
         While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
         I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt  not lack
         The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
         The azured harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor
         The leaf of eglantine, whom, not to slander,
         Outsweetened not thy breath."

   Only lately it has  happened me  to be  in  attendance
 upon  a patient whose premises  immediately adjoin a
 rural cemetery.  I  never visit  this  person but as I pass
 out through the garden I cast a glance to a contiguous
 corner,  thinking that if I  owned his  place I should by
 all means  possess myself of the unoccupied spot, that
 thus  to  my children all of earth I might leave should
 be near them  as long as possible.   I  look  upon that
 spare  corner near  the quiet country house, and over
 my heart  there come, with a flood of memory,  the
 pathetic lines of Campbell:
        " And say, when, summoned from the world and thee,
         I lay my head beneath the willow-tree,
         Wilt thou, sweet mourner, at my stone appear,
         And soothe my parted spirit lingering near ?
         O, wilt thou come, at evening hour, to  shed
         The tears of memory o'er my narrow bed,
         With aching temples on thy hand reclined,
         Muse on the last farewell I leave behind,
         Breathe  a deep sigh to winds that murmur low,
         And think on all my love and all my woe?"

   A cemetery,  again, may in  itself antagonize its  sad
associations.  Laurel Hill, for example, or Greenwood, 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
with their grand surroundings and artistic adornments,
looking on  a summer day so calm and peaceful, are
really inviting to a  world-weary man,  and  are  not
gloomy places to any one.  My own nature has never
risen to a higher plane than when wandering  through
Greenwood, and its attractions have for me a fascina-
tion which carries me each year to its avenues.
  Country churchyards,  too,  have I seen, where the
peace of  heaven seems lingering over them,—places
where  the birds tarry longest and sunset leaves its last
ray.  Under the trees of  such a  tarrying-place have I
sat  in  the glory of an autumn evening, and felt that
the notes from the organ-loft were voices from heaven.
  But  I  am forgetting that I have left the poetry to
Dreamthorp.
  Drainage.—In the town, the corporation  sees to it
that your house and its surroundings are relieved of all
excess  of water; in the country, every one has to look
out for himself, and an  important matter it is to look
after, as every country liver  finds.  Without consider-
ation of this matter,  I  once bought a country house
which  literally rotted away from its foundation,  and
there was nothing to be done in the premises but let it
rot; drainage,  in its particular  situation, being en-
tirely out of question, unless, indeed, one had been of
a mind to expend more time, trouble, and  money than
the premises were worth.
  Never buy a country house without seeing to it  that
the foundation stands upon a higher level than  some
channel which may drain it, and this, by the way, is not
to consider alone the  dry summer day on which you go
first to visit the  place; you are to think of the winter 
IN THE COUNTRY.
215
and spring.  Look to it fully that no excess of water
shall be able to drown you out;  some places, which in
dry weather are glorious,  are, in winter and  spring,
ankle deep in slush and  mire,  and  everything about
them  is as wet as a soaked board. Open the front door
of such a house, and a chill strikes you instantly. Afire
must be kept the year round, or otherwise you live in the
moisture of a vault. Places there are of this class where
the question of the water from the kitchen-pump comes
to absorb the attention of the whole household.  I know
of such an establishment where a drain, two hundred
feet in length, was  made from the pump to an  adjoin-
ing field,  and, this  failing to  lose the water, a well was
appended, holding two  hundred cart-loads of stone,
and, after all this trouble and expense,  there is almost
constant  worriment;  the water  will back upon the
kitchen trough,—sometimes because the drain gets ob-
structed,  sometimes because the well  becomes  filled
with  the  debris that accumulates between the  stones.
For comfort and  inexpensiveness, always get a  natural
drain, if possible; none other, in country living, equals
it; not, of course,  that this  applies to a matter of ten
feet or so.  Such  a drain, becoming  obstructed, can
readily be cleared  by a  pole, but as soon  as you get
out of reaching distance you  have for yourself more or
less trouble.
   Drainage by the roof is another and not less impor-
tant matter for consideration.  Never buy or build a roof
so flat that it has not  in  itself the ability to throw off
all excess of snow.  Pitch  is  to a roof of as much con-
sequence  as it  is to a voice.  A flat roof, practically
viewed, is a source  of almost as much discomfort as a 
216       ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

peevish wife.  When it snows, you are everSn a worry
about  the  excess of weight  the  rafters  are  having to
carry.   You cannot  help  fearing, as you lie snugly in
bed on a stormy night, that there may be accumulating
just a little more than the builders allowed for.  When
the snow melts, or the long rains come on, you know
that shingles are rotting, and that rafters are suffering;
or, if  the  roof be of tin,  you have  to calculate the
amount of paint  each storm costs  you.  As  veranda
roofs  are  concerned, flatness is the universal  fault;  I
may only judge that no architect ever owned a veranda,
having to keep it in repair, or otherwise that architects
and carpenters have some kind of a general copartner-
ship.   Another fault in veranda  building, so far as ex-
pense  and unnecessary trouble are  concerned, lies in
that manner of construction which requires plastering.
Keep the plasterer inside the house; he has no business
outside ; if there were no fault to be found with plaster
itself,  the  objection would  be in its keeping air  from
the rafters, and most particularly does this apply when
a flat  roof is made of anything but tin or slate.
   As  to gravel-roofing, I speak from a sufficiently wide
experience when I say that  it is only applicable to very
temporary buildings,—it is assuredly dearer at six cents
per square foot than well-painted tin would be at twenty.
The objection to this material lies not only in its being
in itself good for  nothing, but in its being destructive
to all  that  it is intended  to protect; if you want to
enjoy a big rain-storm, don't have a gravel roof over
your head.
  A veranda roof should never be without a gutter that
shall carry the drainage entirely away from its base ■ 
IN THE COUNTRY.
217
 this applies most particularly, as will be seen, to such
 verandas  as have the floor-joist resting on the ground-
 level,—a  level, by the way, that never is employed by
 the man who designs his  second  porch.   Take it as a
 rule that wood is never to rest directly upon  the earth;
 dampness and stability in timber are incompatibles, and
 the dampness always gets the better of the stability.
   Shade.—No  shade is  an abomination.  A bilious
 fever fattens in  the sun as does miasm in  a marshy
 valley.  Too much shade, on  the  contrary, and too
 near  the  house, is  equally  of  ill  import;  it  keeps
 things damp, and dampness is a breeder of pestilence.
 An atmosphere confined about a house by a too dense
 foliage  is, like  the  air of  an unventilated room, not
 fit for practical purposes.   The sporadic poisons have
 an  intimate relationship with dampness;  miasm lives
 in  it as does a snail in  his  shell.   Besides this, it
 rots the wood-work of the building, and even  more,
 as the real comfort of living  is concerned,  it  shuts
 out  the cool breath of the summer nights, and makes
 restless  swelterers where even a blanket  might be en-
 joyed.  Never have shade so arranged that it interferes
 with circulation, and  certainly never  buy a  country
 house without its shade.   Shade-trees are worth more
 than buildings.   A  man may create out of timber and
 bricks just what  he  fancies, provided his purse be long
 enough, but no wealth can make  an avenue of oaks or
a clump of elms; trees grow, and a  man  may only
plant for  his children.  The shady place  is the play-
ground, and the lawn refreshes  the  visitor.   A house
that stands all outdoors in  the country is a hundred
times more uninviting than the house crowded between 
2i8       ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

its fellows on  the city avenue.  Try boarding in such
a house a week at least before  you buy it.   If in such
premises one's friends visit  him twice, let him be sure
it is himself that is the attraction.
  A  Stream of Water.—Water with fish  in it, and
water with depth for the bath and width for the sail, is
a feature  in  a country  property  beyond  price.  No
man  but he who possesses such a stream can have any
idea of what the ownership is.   Moving water is eternal
in its newness, and if at some place it happens that it
plashes and  leaps over and among stones and rocks, a
song  is singing day and night.   A  stream  is a  pano-
rama of which one never tires; it is that thing of beauty
and freshness which is a joy forever.  A stream of water
crowds upon a man the loves and  the philosophy of life
and  living.   As one stretches himself upon the cool
bank and looks out through tree-branches, he  luxu-
riates ; as  he fishes, he meditates; as he sails, he com-
pares and  reflects.   Never allow an affordable sum of
money to  separate  you from a stream;  it is the very
last of all the things of earth that shall lose to you
its attractions, and  it is that which, of all your invest-
ments, shall pay you the largest interest.
  Conveniences.—Men  and  women are  gregarious
animals, and it will not be found well to get out  of the
way  of such gregariousness.   A man is  not wise in
buying a lonely place, or a place  so difficult of  access
that people stay from him rather than  take the trouble
to get to him.  Any house that is beyond a comfortable
walking distance of the station, or landing, is out of the
way.   It is out of the way, not alone for one's friends,
but for one's self.  A man walks to the station a  dozen 
                 IN THE COUNTRY.             2Ig

 times where he would ride once, particularly if it de-
 pends on himself to gear up; and a walk to a station
 is a walk into the world.
   It is handy to be so situated that the ladies of one's
 family are independent of John the coachman,  or of
 the horses that are always afflicted at  inconvenient
 seasons.   It is handy to be so in relation with the cars
 that one may remain, after the day's shopping or work,
 to a concert or  lecture and run home to  bed.  Then,
 again, it is handy to feel that friends can come to your
 house independent of the trouble of carriage relations,
 and particularly is  this pleasant  in winter-time, or in
 rainy weather, or under circumstances where no horses
 may happen to  be  kept,  or when a party of friends
 being at one's house may desire to leave together.   But
 of all things is it most convenient in that it keeps a man
 in the world, and chides him if he tends to grow  care-
 less or rusty: a man does  not care to be seen among
 the well-dressed people at a station looking slovenly
 and untidy.  Again,  there is a cheerful sound of vitality
 in a car-whistle  and  in the steamboat-bell.   One feels
 that life  is at  his door if it  may please him  to step
 into it;  the student, as he hears  the sounds,  closes his
 book and dreams; the retired man of  business closes
 his  eyes and is back  in a moment among packages and
 invoices.   I often have sat upon my own porch,  and,
 as the cars thundered up to the  station, felt the  wide
 relations with life afforded me by  the tireless wheels.
 I may go where  I please, I say, and when I please,  and
 because I may thus go, and know I may, I care little or
nothing about the going, so I take it out in thinking
about those who are traveling, what they may be after, 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
how life  is going with  them,  and  the multitudinous
things which come of thinking.
  The Farm.—Associated with country living must be
the things of the farm.   I do not mean by this reapers,
and mowers, and thrashing-machines, for these may or
may not  be necessary to a man as he happens to have
fixed himself.   Let me say, to make an example, that
you and  I are persons  of quiet pretensions, having,
besides the nest-egg that shall buy a place, an income
say of from  one to five  thousand a  year: we are  rich
enough with either, as we may happen to have educated
ourselves.  What we want is to be comfortable, and to
get the most out of the calm after the battle.  Take my
word;  if you buy a house  without garden or land you
are making  a  mistake:  the  country  is such  a busy
place that an idler is not  in keeping with  it; better a
hundred  times  remain  in" town  to find  amusement
and entertainment.   If, however, no land  is bad, too
much is not  better.   A  man not strictly dependent on
his produce, needs that  quantity of  acres which allows
him to correlate his force; that is to say, it is pleasant
to feel that  Patrick's wages pay themselves, that the
horse raises his own feed, that the hogs give back to the
land as much  as they take from it, that chickens are
self-supporting,  that  fruit  and  flowers  and vegetables
revolve  in a  circle,  of  which  you,  being  the  center,
profit,—to express the whole matter in one word, that
you "make things pay."
  You have commenced by hiring a man whose wages
are to be, say four hundred a year.  You have bought a
horse of  a force commensurate with that of the man.
You have a plow, harrow,  hoes, forks,  and  the various 
IN THE  COUNTRY.
221
 apparatus required for limited planting. Now, what you
 want is  to  set man, horse, plow, harrow, and hoes to
 work, so that a full circle shall be accomplished.   This
 is the problem.  The answer to it I am entirely satisfied
 I have worked out.  You need fifteen acres of ground:
 ten  may be enough, but fifteen is the very fullness of
 the  answer.  A  man who,  with horse, plow, harrow,
 and hoe, cannot work with all proper ease and comfort
 this amount of land had better at once be sent  adrift,
 or to a hospital for the indolent.   With fifteen acres of
 ground, and with a judgment to employ its resources, a
 man can see in its perfection the beauty of a correla-
 tion which  employs everything  and wastes  nothing.
 Five acres, for instance, wastes two-thirds of the time
 of a full hand; five acres allows the horse to stand idle
 in the stable when he should be harrowing his  winter
 corn or  gathering  into the barn the winter hay; five
 acres necessitates the keeping up of the chickens to the
 double injury of crops ar d fowls; the cow, too,  is stinted
 in grass, and in return stints in the milk and butter;
 in short, there is  a break in  the circle that destroys its
 perfectness.  Twenty acres, on the other hand, is equally
 non-correlative.  A man cannot get over twenty acres
 to the getting out of all that it has in it; neither can
 a horse.   The  excess, then,  of capital  is  sunk  in  the
 extra acres.   If it is more than fifteen you want, let it
 be thirty-five, or even forty; two men and two  horses
 should do full  justice to forty acres, the work in con-
 cert  intensifying the capability.  When I say full justice,
 I mean that no hedge-row be unplowed, no headland
untilled.   I have seen two men attempt a hundred acres,
but the extra sixty seldom means anything more than so 
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
much  capital  idle:  quite  as  much  could have  been
gotten out of  forty as has been  brought out of the
hundred; this is a common experience.
   Growing crops give a pleasure understood alone by
him who owns them.  You do not get it from the crops
of other people, just as other people's children interest
not like our  own,  be  they ever so  much prettier,
wiser,  or better.  A calf born  on one's own place is
marked as no other calf ever was;  even a litter of pup-
pies present points of difference from all other puppies,
while a brood of ducks  or chickens  are of unflagging
interest, from the day the shells are pecked until that on
which, at table,  the guest declares their tenderness and
succulency.  Never is grass so green as one's own;  never
peach so juicy and rare.  If you have not felt this, you
can judge  nothing about the  matter, and are  to  be
pitied.  It is Bayard Taylor, I think, who says, "A man
has not  completed his fullness until he has begotten a
child, written a book, or planted a tree."   He might
have added that he has not understood  his happiness
until he  has  plowed land and cultivated stock.  Mr.
Taylor, however, evidently understands this, as he left
the turmoil of a city life to cultivate in concert his muse
and acres at Kennet Square;  his cabbages equal,  no
doubt, his "Faust," and  one  might not well accord
them higher praise.
  Books.—You  need not at all mind your neighbor,
the old farmer, whose place adjoins your own, when he
tells you that book-farming amounts to nothing.  It
might, perhaps,  have been  so when he was a  boy or
young  man; but times are changed; the book-writers
of to-day are the practical men of the age;  book-farm- 
IN THE COUNTRY.
223
ing is  like book-medicine, or book-law, it is  the col-
lected  and collated rules of experience and observation.
But, then, a man wants to know what to read.   There
is, of farm literature, necessarily a great deal of trash,
—weeds, it might be more in keeping to say,—just as
every other department of learning is encumbered.   A
solid selection of farm- and garden-books may  only be
made by an experienced  man;  but, as  one  cannot be
possessed of this lore when he first starts in the country,
he must have a shorter cut.   The first farm-book I ever
found  myself  practically interested in  was  a  journal,
which, up to this day, has preserved a reputation for
integrity, reliability, and uprightness which makes it no
compliment from anybody to praise it.  I allude to the
American Agriculturist.   It was and is my vade-mecum
in all things that concern country living.   This paper
will tell you in the best and most practical way just what
to do and just when to do it.  If you need information
on any particular department, it will tell you where and
what the book  is you want.  I have  never found my-
self  wrong in depending on its judgment.   It  is  a
pleasure to embrace an opportunity of expressing the
obligation I feel myself under for the much good the
Agriculturist has done me, and the pleasure it has given
me.  I proffer it as my own experience that a man can-
not afford to live in the country without this journal.
  Very well is it to be remembered by the man of  the
present generation when the book-farmer was the target
for  the ridicule  of his  neighborhood.   Nowadays  the
laugh is on the other corner of the mouth, and the  old
man, or the ignorant young one, who  eschews  journals
and books', is not  only the last  in market but the  last 
224      ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

out of bank.  Even aside from this, the practical aspect
of farming, important as it is, there  is one more im-
portant :  I allude to the pleasure which comes of under-
standing  the  rationale of things.   If, anywhere, there
is a pursuit which deserves to come under the cognomen
of a learned  profession,  it is farming.   Chemistry,
botany, physiology, mineralogy, meteorology, zoology,
these are certainly as truly the  ministers to its apprecia-
tion and successful practice as they are to the practice
of medicine ; indeed, there is no reason, that I can see,
why the  farm may not  direct  the man wider than the
forum. Certain it is, that planting, properly appreciated
and conducted, is exhaustless  in its entertainment; to
weary in the  laboratory of nature seems impossible, as
every day has in it something  new, and every to-mor-
row a promise.
   The literature of a profession  tells a  man what his
fellows are  doing, how they  are succeeding, and on
what the success depends.  A magazine is a farmers'
club, and a text-book is the riddled and sieve-strained
experience of all who have gone before.  How may one,
then,  get along  without these? or,  if  he may, what
pleasure can  he have  in a work which he unnecessarily
and unwisely makes so isolated ?  Comparing and meas-
uring one's successes yield half the pleasure of the suc-
cess, as certainly having found out some better plan to
do a thing than is  known  to  your fellows, there is no
greater happiness than in giving them the good.   I re-
member distinctly the immediate recognition of a good
received, when, from a journal, I got my first  idea of
soiling stock.  It was a something  my circumstances
made me feel the want of, yet unfolded not the indica- 
IN THE COUNTRY.
225
 tions of the want;  at once I built a pen  for my cows,
 and never thereafter had to refill my hay-loft from the
 barns of other people.
   A man who knows nothing of physiology will con-
 sume just one-third  more corn in fattening his hog than
 will  his neighbor who has learned that the inertia of
 the winter's cold is first to be overcome by the calori-
 facient agency of the grain  before it can use its force
 in the evolvement of adipose tissue.   A board or so,
 shutting off the  north wind, secures the  warmth, and
 not a grain of the corn is wasted.   So also is it with
 the chickens.  A southern  window warming up  the
 hennery,  will  correlate heat into fresh  eggs  for the
 breakfast-table, and add relish to the ham which they
 accompany.   Thus looking at the matter, one sees that
 intelligence should circle the whole round; it is simply
 the repetition of the aphorism, " Knowledge is power."
 Two  hundred pounds of guano to the acre of a lawn
 being overrun with  ribbon grass, said a farmer, speak-
 ing to me through a journal, will so bring up the qual-
 ity of the  land as  to afford  that higher nutrition re-
 quired by fine grass, which shall yield it the power to
 root out the meaner organization of the coarser herbage.
 Impressed by the tone of experience marking the article,
 I tried  this suggestion,  and have now no  longer occa-
 sion for my  lawn to look as though  I pastured  pigs
 upon it.
   Outside of what we are disposed to view as the prac-
 tical literature  of the farm is another  class of works
 which no country house can  afford to be without.  In
such class I would put any book which  inculcates sim-
plicity and peaceful  pleasure.  Isaak Walton,  for ex-
                         '5 
226      ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN
 ample, will keep the meadow and wood stream so trans-
 parent that the pebble-stones of its bottom shall  glisten
*-as diamonds.  The Country Parson will convert  hoeing
 into poetry.   Frederick Saunders will  tell  you all the
 quiet and quaint things of his day, and make you feel
 that it  is good to have  so learned  a  friend to talk
 with.  Harland Coultas shall make trees converse with
 you, and tell all  the  secrets of their vegetation and
 growth.   Zschokke will invite you  to the  meditative
 shade  which takes his ardent admirer, Victoria, so
 often to the peaceful retreat of Balmoral.  Thoreau will
 show you how little  it takes to make a natural  man
 comfortable.  Alexander Wilson will invest for you the
 wood tramps with such  a  glory that never shall you
 weary of the songs of birds, the chatter of squirrels, or
 of the roamings hither and thither.  Much, very much,
 is there of this class of literature, and  to live among
 it is to breathe the spirit of the Catskill Heights, a some-
 thing, by the way, which  can be known only by being
 felt.   A man who has gotten into  the cloud-regions
 of this  great mountain has, by some metamorphosis,
 relieved himself of the littlenesses and  meannesses of
 life; so  also  he who  has  gotten into the clearer and
 purer atmosphere of simple life comes to see things as
 they are, and  throws off the clogging vanities  with a
 sense of exhilaration  and relief which makes him feel
 that he has only come  to the knowledge of the true life.
   Scenery. —Be willing ever to give a price for attractive
 surroundings, and  be not too practical  in considering
 the relations  of a  rolling  field to the easy running of
 the plow.  It may be,  however, that you, with whom I
 am  just now conversing, are  of too practical a nature, 
IN THE  COUNTRY.
227
as you  are  pleased to consider yourself, to care any-
thing about gentle hills and verdure-clad, rolling val-
leys.   Buy you, then, a place on some great stretching
plain, where vision is bounded alone by the outlooking
power of the  optic nerves.  Your plow here  will run
with least directing, and your imagination will never
be excited to know what a hill-barrier conceals.   A
plain is the  best place of residence  in  the world for a
man who takes credit to himself in  asserting that he has
none of the  poetical nonsense about him.
  Surroundings constitute a place  quite as much as the
land itself.  From my own country house I look out on
the Delaware  River fifteen miles.  To sit in the fresh
morning on my porch  and watch the  vessels  coming
and  going, is  a pleasure of which I have never tired.
A river is an  ever-changing beauty:  now the winds
lash  the water into waves, and even steamers struggle
along with effort;  to-morrow, all  is placid and calm,
and one's own cockle-shell of a boat skims like a bird
over the glassy  surface.   Adjoining the place of the
brother who owns the  odd  shop  is a  long  meadow,
through which runs a great ditch,  or stream,  or creek,
as it is indifferently called;  here we  may catch a corn-
basket of perch in a morning,  or  find a snapper  for a
soup any day in season.   This stream runs directly into
the river, and  it is but the pull of a five minutes' row to
convert a tired fisherman  into an  enthusiastic yachter.
  Sunny Slope is the  residence of another brother of
the writer's  family ; it is a charming villa, perched on
the top of a  gentle hill, completely hemmed  in  and
guarded by a  thousand sentinels of  firs, pines,  and
larches.   Back of it runs a placid stream, such as would 
228       ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

have  entranced  the gentle  Isaak  on a  midsummer's
morning; great trees of half a century's  growth over-
hang  the water, and  look as  if longing to dip  their
green fingers into its pellucid freshness.  I have thought,
as in meditative mood I  have  stretched  myself full
length under  these old  trees, listening to  the drowsy
hum of the  insect world in the neighboring field, that
in this  belt of wood,  and in this quiet stream, much,
very much,  of the value of the place consisted.   Cer-
tain I am that, for my own part, I would not be tempted
to give half as much for it without as with them, although
they are only surroundings  and  not bona fide  of the
place.  Another association is a whitewashed railroad
bridge in full  view as one sits upon the veranda of the
house;  across this,  day and night,  at intervals of a few
hours, roll the heavy trains, giving vitality  to even the
sleepiest afternoon.  A busy village, too, is  in the fore-
ground,  and one, as he  listens to the clatter of  toil in
car-house and  shop,  may  rejoice   in  the  inclination
which has led him to seek his place in the bright, free
outdoors.
  A water view  or relation of some kind, as implied a
page back, I would consider an absolute  essential to a
country place.   It need not be an ocean, or bay, or even
river; it may be only a stream winding through a wood,
or a rivulet running  down a hillside:  be  it little  or
great, however,  you will learn its value only when you
come  to  it.  That objections  not unfrequently  lie
against water  is, it  must be  admitted, too true: thus,
residents along river-banks are  exposed  to the maraud-
ing propensities  and habits of a certain class of sailors,
who make forays on the hen-roosts and fruit "ardens. 
IN THE COUNTRY.
229
 Epidemic diseases have an affinity for water which leads
 them to follow streams, while endemic sources of offense
 against mortals are more commonly found associated
 with the riverside  than the back  lands.   The salt-
 laden  air from a grand sea-view may hurry the invalid
 from the  beautiful thing  forever, while a wood stream
 may readily prove the instrument of an intermittent
 fever.   One has always to consider the mien of a good.
   Railways, convenient as they are,  compel a compen-
 sation  aside from the fares paid as one travels over them.
 Tramps universally select railroads for their wanderings,
 and a wretched, worthless,  worrying set they are.   I
 have come to  doubt, after considerable experience, if
 any good ever came from helping them.  I would not,
 however,  like to be an instrument of discomfort  to the
 single  wretched  deserving  one  among the host of
 wretched  undeserving  ones, so I only suggest that all
 are not quite so good as they profess to be, and one,
 until he gets a  little experience, will do  best by not
 passing out money too freely.  So far as food is con-
 cerned, give of this all you please; it will generally be
 left somewhere about the exit gate, and serves as well as
 ever for the chickens, who soon learn where a meal is
 always to be found.   Give  money,  however, and the
 beggars grow in  number like the locusts of an August
 morning; where they all  come from, or how all have
 learned you are  a giver, may only be surmised,—they
 come, however, and they know you.
  The  neighborhood of a factory has not been thought
 the  most  desirable  that  a  horticultor might select.
 Factory-boys love fruit; it is quite natural they should.
The misfortune is, they have none of their own, and the 
ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
difference between meum and tuum is not always appre-
ciated  by them with a desirable nicety of distinction.
But  factories  themselves, when very near, are worse
than the boys who work in  them ; this is my own in-
dividual opinion.  Factories have a way of frequently
taking fire, and if the wind happen  to be toward your
place at the time of the conflagration,  it is  not at all
agreeable to  look upon  the  fiery flying debris; it is
very pretty, pyrotechnically speaking, but it is  associ-
ated with just that trifle  of  anxiety which makes one
feel easier when the exhibition is over.
  But, with  all,  if factory-boys  and factory-fires  are
nuisances, the hum of the spindles is  not;  there are few
sounds more soothing than the whir of factory-machines;
it is the modified roar of the great Babel,—a something
that makes ease  more easy, in fact,  a very soporific to
a lazy man.   Then, again, barring always the fires and
the boys, it is a feature to have a factory or a  great mill
not too far off;  it is  an interesting  place to visit,  and
one is, besides,  sure of  an intelligent and  energetic
neighbor in the owner.   It has never happened me to
meet a  mill-operator who was not an interesting man
in the way of practicality, reading, and culture.

  The drinking-water of a  neighborhood, or place, is
not  undeserving attentive consideration.  A man is,
in himself, nearly all made up of water, and if  he is to
thrive  and keep substantial  on such aqueous aliment,
he  needs, certainly, that  quality in which he finds his
nutrition.  Few things  differ  more than water.  Pure
water is a colorless fluid, having neither taste nor smell;
*t is a compound made up of the two  gases  oxygen 
IN THE COUNTRY.
231
 and hydrogen,—one volume, by measure, of the first
 to two of the latter.   Water in which exist other in-
 gredients is impure, and may be termed mineralized;
 as analysis shall  exhibit foreign  admixture, so it is a
 necessity to know whether  the water may, or may not,
 be  drinkable.  Water,  for example,  impregnated too
 freely with lime is not unapt to induce one of the most
 undesirable complaints that can afflict the human body,
 finding,  indeed, its relief only in a surgical operation
 which is associated  with the  greatest risk.  An  iron
 impregnation, on the contrary, might very well prove
 the salvation of a whole family predisposed to anaemic
 diseases. Sulphurous admixtures, or arsenical, or saline,
 would prove of benefit, or the reverse, as  these might
 happen to agree, or disagree, with special requirements.
 The analysis of any water  is easily  made, however, by
 a chemist, and a consultation  with the family doctor
 will soon settle, in any case, the question of fitness or
 non-fitness.  Everything outside of oxygen and hydro-
 gen, it is to be remembered, is foreign to  pure water,
 and, unscientifically considered, would be apt to prove
 an instrument of evil, or, it  might be, good, as accident
 should determine.  Where a matter is so easy to decide,
 it is certainly not prudence to trust  chance.
  Rain-water, of which, in our latitude, we have such
 plenty, is always easily secured in abundance by simply
 saving that which falls upon the roof of the dwelling or
 barn, and if one chooses to incur the expense of a cistern,
 he has a  water with which the chemist will  not be apt
 to find fault.   A cistern which has answered an admir-
able purpose at my own barn was improvised by burying
a hogshead four feet beneath the surface of the ground ; 
 232      ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.

 in the upper head were fitted the pipes of conduction,
 —one of them  carrying the water from the gutter of the
 eaves, the other being attached to a pump ;  by this
 simple arrangement we have mostly had water  enough
 for the barn requirements.

   " Never," says  Dreamthorp, " was velvet on a mon-
 arch's robe  so gorgeous as the green mosses that beruff
 the roofs of farm and cottage, when the sunbeam slants
 on them and goes.''  Green moss has its poetical aspect,
 but it is when seen on the farm- and cottage-houses of
 somebody else.   I am  sorry to express this; it has a
 kind of  selfishness about it; but it is true, nevertheless.
 No man can afford the indulgence of the poetic instinct
 to an extent which allows of the  cultivation of mosses
 upon  his own  roofs; a roof with moss upon it means
 rottenness,  and the rottenness means the inside of a
 house set outside ; and it is not  at  all difficult to see
 that this is a kind of poetry that contains within itself
 the elements of its own destruction.  One cannot afford
 to pay for a moss-grown roof simply that it is gorgeous.
 In a dreamy mood I was tempted  once myself to buy
 a moss-grown roof.  You will find it well, if satisfied,
 to let the  cost of the experience be mine.  I was so
 mulcted that whenever, nowadays, a friend consults
 me about the  "cot in the valley,"—and the valley is
 the place for mossy roofs,—I ask him if he has  looked
 at the Roof.   Yes, I have paid for an experience in
 Roofs:—shingle roofs, double where they should have
 been treble; tin roofs, riddled with microscopic holes,
yet not too  small  to save the pretty paper newly put
over  the chamber walls;  slate  roofs,  under  which 
IN THE COUNTRY.
233
winter frost  finds its way, seeming to laugh at you,
as slate  after slate cracks and whirls on the mocking
wind.  Gravel roofs, too.  In economical mood I have
experimented in  tar and gravel.  My tar I now keep
for  my  patients with  phthisis,  and the gravel I am
satisfied to consume upon  my carriage-drive.  Fancy
Mansard roofs, also, have come under my notice.   We
have  one  in the family;  the first  cost, I am led to
believe, was not by any means the  greatest in its con-
struction ; it seems, or did  seem, as  subject to fits of
leaking as is a certain nervous patient I have, to fits of
hysteria;  it  is  all right, cured  now, I believe, or so
pronounced  by the builder, but certainly I  have not
paid  my hysterical patient  more visits than did the
roof-doctor  his roof.   I only did  not sympathize in
the matter of the multitudinous  bills, because, in this
direction, generous ebullitions had long been exhausted
on  my own  pocket.   Let not a man be  deceived in
accepting Webster "that a roof is a cover to a house."
Answer well as this may in  a dictionary, and apply as
the definition of a class or genus, yet one will do best
by acting  on the premises that a class is a thing made
up of species.

  Proof-readers, as every one knows who has ever pub-
lished a book, are very practical  individuals;  it is not
at all unfrequently the case that they give an author
more trouble with their incessant  queryings  than the
author gives the  printer with his careless manuscript;
and this is saying a good deal.   I am interrupted just
at this point by the gentleman accoucheur to this volume,
who seems very desirous that I  shall tell him, out of 
234
ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
the fullness of my knowledge  of country things, how a
man without a bank account  shall find  himself at the
station which precedes the consideration of situations,
outlooks,  malaria, and graveyards.  In  other words,
this suggestive individual asks me how a man,  however
much fitted by education, habits, and inclinations, may
come to the enjoyment of country living if he has  no
money.
   Now, since such  a  query has been suggested, I  do
not at all doubt me  that  there  are others  interested
alike  in such a question,  and, as I see no difficulty at
all in the answer, I will have  a double pleasure in talk-
ing about the  matter: first, because if I can  show my
friend a road away from the dark desk at  which  all
day he tries his  eyes over pages which must long since
have  grown out of interest  to  him, I shall feel that I
have somewhat repaid the trouble which I am sure my
ill-punctuated scribbling gives  him.  While, secondly,
to point the way to the ownership of a  country-place,
or, indeed, to several, I  have only to modify a  very
little  my own experiences.   To show him how to own
a farm will,  indeed, cost  me infinitely less trouble than
did the answering for him this very morning of a single
query.   He will then heed,  in  more than his usual
professional way, what I  now write for his benefit.
   " Where there is a  will there is a way."  This is the
expression of the common  experience, and this  expe-
rience, I assume, is always truthful and reliable. A few
days back, conversing with a  friend just returned from
a tour in  Europe, he  informed me that his  expenses
amounted to just twelve dollars a day.  Bayard Taylor,
in his "Views  Afoot,"  went  over the  same ground 
IN THE COUNTRY.
235
traveled by my friend, at a cost at which the latter
started, and without the slightest doubt, as I am well
convinced, had much  the  better time.   The one car-
ried luggage enough to swamp him, the  other had a
knapsack. One has only to read Mr. Taylor's books to
see what a glorious trip, in contrast, was that first one.
When myself a  boy, with  more desire than means, I
traveled a  hundred and  fifty  miles  to  New York,
spent a week  in that city,  excursionized  on the Hud-
son and East Rivers, returning  home with thirty cents
out of  the  fifteen  dollars  with  which  I started, and
which fifteen dollars had  cost, as I must admit, con-
siderable deprivation and  trouble  to get  together.   I
have  often since been  to  that  city, lived in its most
luxurious  hotels,  and not  denied myself entirely  its
expensive enjoyments, but I have never lived over the
pleasures of  that first visit.
  Success in any undertaking depends so much on a
man himself that it is always hard to mark out a path
for one not perfectly and fully known.  But I will make
an illustration, and I  will do  it by metamorphizing
myself temporarily into my friend the proof-reader.
  I start with the assumption that I prefer country to
town,  that my ideal is  to  get  into the country, and,
being determined to make  there a home  for  myself, I
set about it at  once.  First, one cannot move without
money; and second, one cannot buy a place without
money.  Money, then,  is the first  matter.   Now,  let
me look about at my town  relations. The house I live
in costs me  for rental say two hundred dollars a year;
for  this I have a  shelter,  nothing else; no  eggs,  no
chickens, no vegetables, no anything which serves as an 
236      ODD HOURS OF A  PHYSICIAN.

offset against  the  rental;  the  necessities mentioned,
together with  meat, milk, and the etceteras of house-
keeping, must  be  paid for,  all of them,  additional.
The income out of which I pay for these things is one
thousand or fifteen hundred  dollars a year, as it may
be, and it  takes the whole of it to meet expenses.  I
then would seem to be in a cul-de-sac, but I am deter-
mined in my endeavor to get out of it.  Such  determi-
nation must be the motive force.
   First, I consider the direction countryward  in which
I would like to live, and next—a most important con
sideration,  fixed as I am—the matter of communication
with town.   I shall have,  of  course, to continue, years
likely, my city occupation, for  on this, until I see my
way to a better, am I to depend for my support.  I should
be suited in this respect in a distance of half an hour, or
even three-quarters, by rail;  this  settled, the fare then
becomes the  next question.  What will it cost for the
double trip daily the year round ? this I am to  consider
as a dead  outlay; the pleasure of the ride,  and the
good which comes to one's health, I may not take into
the account.   Pleasure I  cannot  afford particularly to
consider, and  as for the exercise, that I must  esteem a
secondary matter.   The gist of  the  thing  is money,
money, " only this and  nothing more."  Thirty-five
dollars  a year is the  ordinary commutation  price on
most of the  roads for this  distance.  This,  then,  is
understood.
   Now first commences my outlay in  the premises.  I
must get  an  idea  of properties.  So,  scanning  the
newspaper  daily, I at length  see something that looks
according to  my need.   Here is a place  advertised of 
IN THE COUNTRY.
231
four acres, with a plain comfortable dwelling, ten miles
out, and the price fifteen  hundred dollars, terms easy.
Saturday, or, if I cannot possibly get this time, I take
Sunday, and walk  or ride to  see the place.   I do not,
however, find it what I want; it is too lonely, or it has
an unpromising soil, or it involves a walk  too long to
be convenient to the station,  or there is no school near
for the  children, or the house is  out of repair to  an
extent which shows a  second cost to be  immediately
added to the first,  or the fault is in the ill condition of
the fences, or absence of a necessary barn, or there is a
neighboring marsh which threatens miasm.  Whichever
or whatever it is, the place fails to suit; but  I  am not
to have  an entirely bootless errand. I proceed to learn
something of what is considered easy terms in the sell-
ing of country-places, and here, to my gratification and
surprise, I find out that a very trifle of money down,
only,  indeed, enough to fix and secure the  matter, is
all that is necessary,—three hundred dollars is enough.
   I may stop now, except that it please me each holi-
day to walk and look at advertised  properties.   Now
it is that I  bend all my forces  to  the getting of three
hundred dollars.   I  move into a  house  at  fifty dollars
less rent; this  is  fifty dollars a  year saved.  I deny
myself the fall coat, and suggest to my wife that the old
dress will look handsome to me until the place  is bought.
  In short, I do not hesitate to pinch the present  for
the future, and  take my compensation in talking and
thinking about what is to be.   In two years, if not in a
year, the three hundred dollars are in bank.
  Again now, and  in earnest, the search  for the place
recommences, and still also the saving goes on.  Finally 
238       ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

a little farm is found, just like one, if you  please, I
happen to know on sale at this moment of writing.   It
is a two-story, red-painted house, not particularly beau-
tiful in itself, but  capable of being  made so when a
tasty hand shall alter the color, and in the future put a
nice little porch  around it.   There  is  a good  barn,
a well  of  fine water, a beautiful wood on the opposite
side of the road, and four acres of well-fenced land now
half covered by cultivated blackberries and strawber-
ries.   The soil is very fair truck, and sufficiently light
to be  plowed, if  necessary, by an overdriven, twenty-
dollar  hack  horse, and then kept in order all  the rest
of the season with the hoe.   A railway is within fifty
feet  of the  front  door,  and  over this road hundreds
of business-men travel daily to and  from their business
in town ; a station being within a hundred yards.   A
beautiful village, with its single maple arbored street,
extends itself out to the property, it making, indeed,
the last house of the town as it  looks westward.  This
is  the  place; it is fifteen hundred dollars, and can  be
bought with the three hundred dollars,—the remainder
lying on mortgage.
  We  are prepared now for the purchase, and at once
make  it.  We move, and the day the town  house is
vacated fifty dollars more is saved on  the rent, seventy-
two we pay as interest  money on the mortgage, and
thirty-five for our  yearly ticket; this is  one  hundred
and  seven against  one hundred and  fifty, or against
two  hundred,  as  formerly  paid.   We  see  now,  at
once, that we have in this single item a sinking fund,
which, let alone,  will  take care of the mortgage in*a
very reasonable time.  But the  mortgage is now seen 
IN THE COUNTRY.
239
 not to be a matter requiring immediate attention ;  we
 pay  but six per cent, for this  money, we  should  like
 to get fifty for our  own, and  this we  can do.   We
 make now an  investment to this effect by buying a
 cow, perhaps as well  a dozen or two chickens, and, if
 not conscientious about  intruding on the property of
 our neighbors,  we  start two or  three pairs of pigeons,
 which latter, in a year, will  give more pigeon-pies and
 broiled squabs than a family may care to eat.
  Now our place is  going.   Milk, cream,  and butter
 for everything,  eggs for breakfast, and, after a fair start,
 vegetables, fruits, and berries,  which give  us all we
 possibly can consume, together  with a good surplusage
 for  the  market, beside a pig or two developing from
 the consumption of the garbage.
  But what about the work required for all this ? queries
 again our proof-reader.   I answer him, one is to do all
 he can himself in the early morning and evening hours;
 it is, to  a lover of nature, play, not work, to cultivate
 a garden;  but  if the  weeds  accumulate, and the work
 at any time pushes, then there  is a man to be hired
 occasionally for a day or  so ;  he Avill  pay his way,
 never doubt that,  and to prove  it you will find him
 willing to take  the  whole labor off your  hands and
 cultivate the place  on shares; that is, you  do  nothing
 and get  half the produce.   You recognize that  now
 you have become  a  property-owner, and  your estate
 will work for you.
  Another way, however, is to  take now  yourself an
occasional day  from  town and  give it to the country-
place ;  this will  keep up the work, while, at the same
time, it  pays with a large overinterest the  money you 
240      ODD  HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
seem to have sacrificed at the office.  At any rate, as it
will now cost you  not so  much  by one-half to live as
when  in the city,  you may work only  half your time
in town and be just as well off at  the end of the year.
  We will take now another illustration :  fifteen years
back  a  common  farm-hand, whose  prudence  and
economy had saved to him a few hundred dollars,  and
whose inclinations  had conferred on him habits of in-
dustry, economy, and prudence,  was enabled, through
the substantiality of his character, to secure on  shares
a fine farm belonging to one of my own personal friends.
At the end of some eight  years he  was able to buy a farm
for himself, and which his labor and judgment have now
converted into one of the  most valuable in his county.
From a farm-hand, the servant of others, he is now be-
come  a farm-owner and  the master of servants, and so
much is it to his  credit that his neighbors delight to
point  to him as an example of what frugality and fixed-
ness of purpose may accomplish without the start which
so many people  like to talk about: he  started without
a penny; he is to-day, for his situation, rich.
   This, then, is  the answer to  my friend  the  proof-
reader ; and if he finds himself as able  to act upon the
suggestions  presented as he proves himself competent
in matters of syntax and prosody, he may,  in a single
year, be hoeing  weeds from his  own acres  instead of
pulling them from the manuscripts of authors.  Indeed,
more than this, he may,  sooner or  later, come to give
us a  book "On  the Advantages  of a Four-Acre Sun-
shiny  Lot over a Gloomy Printing-Office Desk;" and,
as I am sure any  work which he  might  write would be
reliable, I will here leave the matter with him. 
ADDENDUM.
     LOOKING over what has been written, I am led
      seriously to doubt whether any but the most in-
dulgent of readers  can have reason to be satisfied in
the  investment of  time  and  money  which has  been
given the author in the volume now about ended.   I
propose, therefore, in satisfaction to my own conscience,
to doff here the Bohemian, as I see in his bulletin the
publisher  has  been pleased to term the writer, and in
the last dozen pages find my way back to the point of
departure.
   I am now again—and you will please thus to see me
—a plodding doctor, you a patient.  I will offer a les-
son in medicine, a little office advice, let us call it.  If
you take the trouble to understand, as I shall take care
to make plain the  matter upon which I discourse, I
doubt me  not that from my shoulders I shall be able
to cast any and all sense of obligation.
   "A sound  mind in a  sound body."  This is the
translation of  a Latin phrase of wide meaning and cir-
culation.  It has been asked, with much pertinency,
"If  there  ever was a philosopher  who could endure
patiently the  toothache."   A proper  answer  to the
question is, that the philosopher avoids toothache; just,
indeed,  as with Epicurus  he avoids all ill by acting on
the Socratic idea of bringing down from  the skies his
philosophy, and applying it to every-day affairs.
                         16           ( 241 ) 
242
ODD  HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
  The edge of a wedge is knifelike, but the haft which
follows tears  asunder the log of a century's growth.
Philosophy includes physianthropy, and  this,  for the
mass of us, is  that in which our concern seems the most
particularly to lie.  Physianthropy considers medicine,
and in such a sense the physician is a physianthropist.
We will consult,  then, together  in  our  final hour of
intercourse of that  part of philosophy which by com-
pulsion claims the attention of eVery man.   We shall
be sure to find in it, as in everything else philosophical,
—a good.
  Disease, to one who has not  pondered the  matter,
must seem to be a series of complicated and associated
phenomena;  to the physician it is seen in all its  protean
forms to have a " principle," so simple in its abstract
that it would appear the dullest man should be as able
to comprehend the central or axial truth as the erudite.
An ordinary  " text-book," as it is called,  in medicine,
will number not less perhaps than three thousand pages,
each and every one of which is occupied by  closely-
printed words describing disease ;  the ordinary reader,
turning over  these pages, observing the recondite para-
graphs and the  apparently complex aphorisms, would
have nothing to do but to close it in sheer  despair of
making head or  tail of the matter.   The  physician,
however,  finds no single line or induction complicated
or confused; for the appreciation, he has fitted him-
self by the study of as many thousand pages of physi-
ology, this, in its  turn, having been preceded by a tome
of lessons dissected out from the cadaver.
  Several times in the course of these essays use has
been made of the Jdea of a lever.  A man  knowing no- 
ADDENDUM.
243
thing of the complex  associations of such  an instru-
ment, if shown that moved to or fro  it controls the
force of the locomotive, would thus be seen to possess
in his own hand a power which readily enables him to
move or stop a train, using precisely the same principle
which would be employed by  the engineer.   Between
the two, however, resides this great difference :  the one
stops or starts the  train,  understanding not  how  or
through what association he accomplishes the object;
the other knows all about the matter: the first is not
at all able to reason upon  the phenomena he  himself
produces; the second may ascend from the  coal which
evolves  the  steam, to the  wheels  and cranks manipu-
lated through the influence of  the steam.
  Wonderful as it may seem,  indeed, incomprehensi-
ble,  to  him  who  has just  turned  the thousand pages,
one word, one single word, is the lever of all the tomes
which treat of the science of dis-ease.   One word de-
scribes that upon which the whole great  superstructure
is reared.  The meaning of one word comprehended,
man finds himself in  the  center of the circle, and to
him  the mysteries of the  circlets have ceased to  be
mysteries.  But to learn this word in its  fullness,  man
has, as yet, found no short cut.
  " Irritation."—This is the word of such pregnant
meaning.  Now follow me  closely, and heed, for good,
a doctor's prescription.
  Whenever a man  has anything the matter with  him,
no difference what, where, or how situated, the trouble
arises from  the presence, directly or indirectly,  of
some agent of irritation.  This appreciated, the infer-
ence at  once follows that the relief and cure of the 
244
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
dis-ease lie in the discovery and removal of the cause
inducing it.
  Now, we stop for a moment to consider the meaning
of the term irritation.   It is, as you find it in any dic-
tionary, " that Effect, which arises from the presence of
an irritant."   An irritant, then, is that which irritates,
or which produces irritation.   We may make,  now, an
example.   Two men, both in dis-ease, enter a  doctor's
office; the one complains of pain in his eye, the other
of pain in his abdomen.  The doctor, appreciating, as
his cardinal principle, that both are suffering from the
presence of an irritant, proceeds at once to his inquiries.
In the painful eye he discovers, very quickly, a particle
of sand; this is removed, and the relieved organ returns
at once to  its normal condition.  Passing, now, to his
second patient, he finds the  matter of recognition not so
easy;  the presence of the irritant is  not to be doubted,
but just where it is, and what  it is,  is a question.   As,
after the  ordinary superficial observation, he fails en-
tirely to get sight of it, he  must judge of its presence,
position, and  character differentially.   Here it is seen
he differs from  the  unread  man as  does the engineer
from the lever-mover; he cannot see the thing with his
eyes, he cannot  learn of it through his judgment, he
may not push or pull it away with his fingers; he will
only  discover and unearth  it through his knowledge.
It is  not a digression, if the doctor just  here  suggests
to the reader  that his (the  reader's) judgment should
perceive that  patent nostrums, or any  unprescribed
medicine,  may  only do good by the merest  chance,
by accidentally proving the  antagonist of an  irritant,
a thing which any  experience will exhibit to be of 
ADDENDUM.
245
such rare occurrence that  it is  never sensible or pru-
dent to  take  the hundred risks against, to the one on
the other side.   Is there any difference, as the exhibi-
tion of common sense is concerned; between the man
who takes  an unprescribed medicine for an obscure
complaint, not at all understood by the prescribe^
and the man who starts out on a most important jour-
ney, blindly taking a road suggested by one who has
not learned even whither he would travel ?  Perhaps he
would get where he wanted to go,—he might  get there.
  A first prescription, then, will be, and it  certainly
must prove worth at least half what  has been paid for
the book:  R.—When you cannot very plainly see what
is the matter with  an injured watch, or straighten the
bent hand, call in the watchmaker, not the tailor.
  Irritation, however, involves as  its sequences a cer-
tain series of phenomena which anybody may under-
stand, and  the understanding will show him what should
be done, if it does not show him always just how best
to do it.
  First, we are to understand that  dis-ease is irritation ;
that irritation is the  presence of an  irritant.   An irri-
tant may be, and  indeed  is, anything that  interferes
with the natural functions of a  part or parts.  A par-
ticle of  crust in the carious cavity of a tooth is an irri-
tant which worries the nerve.   A rheumatic effusion
into a joint is an irritant which  impedes the free mo-
tion of the  articulation.  Miasm passing from  the marsh
into the blood is the irritant which in itself is intermit-
tent fever.  Super-alkalinity of  the  blood is the irri-
tant we call the poison of typhoid fever.
  An irritant of any kind  entering the system, antag- 
246       ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.
onism is  the immediate result.   This is what we call
sickness.   Nature at once rebels, and arouses herself to
cast out the incubus,  thus giving us dis-ease.  What is
now to be done is to help nature, assist our own side.
If the crust is in the  tooth, we will rinse it out or pick
it away.   If the  rheumatic  poison or the  miasm has
stolen unaware  into  the blood, we are at once  to get
from the physician, if we have it not in ourselves, the
knowledge required  for the  antagonism.  Whatever
will neutralize  the irritant will be the cure of our dis-
ease, for  the discomfort, we recognise, is simply the
result of the battle commotion going on  between na-
ture and the irritant.   Which may conquer lies  in the
simple matter of which is the stronger.
   Nature, for the removal of an irritant, draws up her
forces always in  a certain order of battle.   First the
call is sounded far and wide over the system at large;
then general commotion is observed; hurrying  to the
attack from every part is the reserve force.  We put our
finger upon the pulse, and find it excited.   We express
this by saying  that inflammation is supervening, and
this does  fully express it, for  inflammation is simply a
perverted condition of the circulation.  But how does
inflammation antagonize an irritant?  We will see this
in instancing an example.
   Here is a man who has run a splinter into his flesh,
and it has gone so deep we may not get at it to pull it
away.  In the immediate proximity of this foreign body
is a nerve  called sentient or  sentinel; its office is  to
keep  the nerve-centers informed, telegraph-like,  of all
that is taking place iir its neighborhood.   No sooner is
its information received than is issued  the order which 
ADDENDUM.
247
 provokes the disturbance we have witnessed ; it  is a
 simple  throwing forward of battalion after  battalion,
 enough, if they can be produced, to cast out the enemy.
 First come the skirmishers, not many in number; tech-
 nically expressed, it is simple vascular excitement,—it is
 the militia of the immediate neighborhood.   These are
 not likely to effect much good; they are the seventy-five
 thousand of our lamented Lincoln; but soon come the
 three hundred thousand,—tramping  they come from
 every village and harnlet of the system; technically,
 we call  this active congestion.  Now is inaugurated the
 order of battle; the invader is surrounded;  tier  after
 tier  the  troops intrench  themselves between him  and
 supply;  they starve him  out by starving the country in
 which he has settled ; the country starves and dies, but
 the invader dies with it.  Let me make another expres-
 sion of  this.   An  irritant, we need not consider what
 it may be, settles at a certain point, producing what we
 call a boil.  The blood stagnates, and nature soon per-
 ceives her inability, unassisted,  to overcome the stasis.
 She has, then, only to kill and  get clear of the part in
 bulk.  Now the observer perceives a  growing indura-
 tion  completely circumscribing  the  affected part;  this
 is the earthwork of the battalion,—i.e. the lymph thrown
 out by the blood.  Soon the circumvallation is com-
 plete,—all circulation is cut  off; the boil, we say, sup-
 purates,  that is, it is starved out; and flesh and irritant
 are thrown off together.  The enemy destroyed,  the
 battalions are called off; i.e. the lymph  is absorbed,
and,  in a short time, equilibrium and quiet are restored.
If the rebellion could have been antagonized at Sumter,
the seventy-five thousand would have  been enough 
248       ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

The  sooner a  cause  is killed,  the  less the commotion
and danger.   Now we pass  to the wider aspect of the
principle.
  An irritant entering the blood, unlike a localized
irritant, is comparable to a  general rebellion.   The
commotion is  everywhere over the system at large, the
danger  is  general, and  the weakest, as  in the body
politic,—however innocent of the disturbance,—is most
likely to fare the worst.   What is the character of the
danger ?  It may  be as  an avalanche,  which at once
overwhelms and buries a man ; but it is much more apt
to be like the  cave from a bank-side which  crushes in
the ribs or breaks the limbs.   A  poison entering  the
system,  and not combated, bears harder and harder, like
a continuous strain, until the weakest part gives way, and
the rest follows. We see then very plainly here, that the
common-sense aspect of the treatment is to find and
administer at  once  the  antidote to  the poison,  or, if
this may not be, we must bring all  collateral aids to the
assistance of nature  in fighting the battle.  A poison
wears itself out, just  as a warrior spends his force,—the
power that can  stand  it longest comes out  conqueror.
But  what  is  meant  by such  assistance ?   Better here
call at once the physician to  advise in the  particular
case; but  if no doctor be by, then  is  meant b> such
assistance  ammonia  water, brandy, beef-tea, cod-liver
oil,  rich  roast beef, sea-bathing,  horseback exercise,
any  and every thing which stimulates  and supports a
man.  The brandy or the whisky for the rattlesnake-
bite ; the  rare  beef, the sea-bathing,  the  horseback
exercise, for the poison of scrofulosis.
  But there is a much more  every-day aspect of  this 
ADDENDUM.
249
  matter, and if the reader will heed fully and understand
  just what I shall most plainly tell him, it may very well
  be that his outlay for our book shall some time or other
  prove the purchase-money of his life.
   One of the most  common  expressions  heard, and
  heard everywhere, is, "I have taken a cold."   Where
  one man has died in battle, a thousand  have died from
 taking cold ; and of every thousand dying, five hundred
 have come to their fate from not knowing what a cold
 is.  As a physician, I am satisfied  I do not overstate
 this.
   Now, what I propose here is  to  tell  the  reader just
 exactly what a cold is, and the principle on which the
 doctor treats it.   The whole gist of the matter is very
 simple, so much so,  indeed,  that  you  will likely  be
 prompted to ask " if that is all;" and yet all it will be.
   A Cold means a disturbance,  from exposure, of the
 circulation;  such exposure may hare been either to
 cold, to heat, or to  draughts.  Flowing through the
 circulatory system of  a man is that material which we
 call the blood.  In a state of equipoise, or non-derange-
 ment, every part  has  alike of  this fluid  its proper pro-
 portion ; there is just so much circulating through his
 lungs, just so much in  his liver, so much in his spleen,
 so much in  his  feet;  every part has enough, but not
 overmuch; he is comfortable,  in health, in ease.
  Now we will make a cold.
  Four friends go out for a walk on a sloppy winter's
day, and all come back with wet feet.  Or the  four, on
a summer's afternoon, go out for a row  on  the lake or
river ; becoming overheated from exertion, each throws
off his vest or neckcloth, luxuriating in the breeze which 
250       ODD HOURS  OF A PHYSICIAN.

so rapidly and delightfully refreshes.  Next day the four
are  sick;  all have taken a cold.   One, however,  has
Pneumonia, a second Pleurisy, a third Inflammation of
the  bowels, and the fourth Lumbago.  In other words,
all have the same thing, yet all have different diseases.
This is their condition.  The cold, impinging on  the
surface of their wet  feet, or over their exposed chests
and necks, so contracted the small vessels of those parts
that all the blood was driven out of them;  this fluid
had, of course, to go somewhere, so it intruded on the
circulation of other parts; it became, in reality, through
its excess, an irritant;  it overstimulated, it  overcon-
gested.   In the case of the first patient, the lungs were
his  weakest organs ;  these had  not the vital force to
contract upon and  drive  back the current intruding
on them, so the fluid forced itself into arteries and capil-
laries, and gorged them; this is Pneumonia; the  other
parts saved  themselves  alone through  their superior
vitality; they possessed the capability of resistance and
antagonism.   In the second case  the pleura was  the
weak part; in the  third,  the abdominal  viscera; in
the fourth, the muscles of the back.
  We have, then, our four patients, all laboring under
congestions, all  afflicted through a common  derange-
ment of  their circulatory systems;  the principle in-
volved in all being precisely the same.   If  just  here
may be accomplished the  restoration of the  deranged
equilibrium, the four will be well on the third morning;
if such  equipoise  may not be secured, one out of the
four will most likely succumb, a second be converted
into a life-long invalid; the third and fourth may escape
with more or less injury. 
\
                   ADDENDUM.                251

   What can be done? The indication is to relieve the
 overburdened part.  How?
   We will take the lung as our example.  The organ is
 full, overfull, of blood; the man is drowning from the
 engorging fluid; the vessels and capillaries of the part
 cannot contract upon themselves to their own emptying
 because of this overfullness which is the destruction of
 their tonicity;  assist now  to get away any part of this
 excess, and nature will  take care of the balance.  To
 get away  part of this blood is then the object.  This
 may be attempted in any way that promises to fulfill the
 indication.  First, if the feet of a man be placed in a
 bucket of hot water, it is soon remarked that the parts
 grow red  and engorged;  this is because the capillaries
 are enlarged, and the blood, by gravitation and attrac-
 tion, has filled every part.  This blood must come from
 somewhere; it comes as much from the overfilled lung
 as any other part;  the lung thus, perhaps, unburdened
 to the limit  of its contractile power, the trouble  is
 ended.  A single hot footbath, or a repetition of these,
 has saved a multitude of  lives;  one might not count
 them.
  A second principle of relief to a congested part is to
 get into bed and drink hot tea  until thrown into pro-
 fuse  perspiration.  Now,  as perspiration is the water
 of the blood, a  man cannot sweat without casting off
 so much from the volume of the blood.   In this way
 congestion is often speedily relieved.
  A third manner is found  in  reducing the volume
 through  the use of what are called hydragogue cathar-
tics.   A dose of Epsom  salts, for instance, may reduce
the quantity of water in a man's blood to the  extent 
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
of a quart, and this, in a congestion, might very well
be his salvation.  In  conjunction  with the depletory
medicine  the  physician almost  invariably  prescribes
opiates;  this is with the object of soothing and quiet-
ing the irritated and worried nervous system.
  A man  recognizes he has taken cold through a sense
of feverishness and heat that takes possession of him.
This is likely his very first symptom; it is the condition
of a simple deranged circulation ; at no particular point
is there especial derangement, but the system at large is
in a state of irritability.  A quieting, soothing influence,
any one  may recognize, is just now the  indication; it
is  really the  case  that  the nervous center, like  an ill
officer, has become fussy from some fright, ordering, if
you please, the troops  here and there, without  appar-
ently any good reason.  If the center was less impress-
ible,  or  a trifle more indifferent,  nothing  would be
felt to be wrong,—indeed, nothing  would be wrong.
Anything which a man  has recognized to be soothing
to him is here in place;  few things are better than
lemonade made very acid, and if, in  conjunction with
this,  the  patient will  take, on  going to bed, twenty
grains of the bromide of potassium,  the chances are that
next morning he will get up well.   If he does not, yet
feels no worse, or  it may be a little  better,  then he is
simply to continue his lemonade and potassium through
the day, at least two lemons to  be consumed with the
first, and fifteen to twenty grains of the latter dissolved
in a wineglass of water, three times  repeated during
the day.  Under such a course it is  much  more than
likely that the circulation will be found to calm itself
as do the waters after a storm. 
ADDENDUM.
253
   We are, however, in our lesson, to look at the oppo-
 site aspect of the matter; perhaps the patient grows
 worse instead  of better.   A sense of fullness is felt in
 the head, or oppression in the chest.   This is because
 a weak part is  being overflooded,—the weak point,
 physically, of the individual.   A man can always learn
 of such weak point through a cold.   He has now the
 condition  and indications found  and  described  with
 the four Rowers.  Now is the call for  relief loud and
 pressing.  It is  the condition of a country  overrun
 and overburdened with its own troops; these must  be
 gotten  away, all  of  them, and the quicker the better.
 Here, then, is  the demand for the hot foot-bath, the
 sweating medicines, the diuretics, the cathartics, and,
 if the individual be of full habit and plethoric, it  may
 be that  it  shall be necessary to destroy the troops  in
 bulk by bloodletting.   This last,  however,  is seldom
 necessary; proper generalship will save both country
 and troops.
   This, then, is a cold, and the principle given is that
 on which it is treated.   To this extent has the  reader
 learned  of  medicine  and  become indoctrinated  in
 physianthropy.

   To the inquiring reader it will not be without interest
 or profit to advance one  step  farther, and to consider
 the pathological  expressions  of inflammation.  This
 shall complete  for him a little circle, yet,  in itself, a
 full one.
  The term Inflammation is derived from two Latin
roots,—"in," within,  and "flammo,"  to burn,—and
signifies a heat, or burning.  It  is, as we have expressed 
254
ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN
it, a perverted condition of the circulation, and may be
more or less complete, or marked.   The phenomena
which characterize  such perversion of the circulation,
or Inflammation, are, as we  see them exhibited on any
affected  part  of the external  body, Redness,  Heat,
Pain,  and Swelling.   To understand the expressions
of  these phenomena,  is to  understand Inflammation.
First, then, as to the redness.   Blood is red.   If a very
little red pigment be put into a large quantity of white,
it is more than likely we shall  fail to perceive that  the
shade has been altered ;  increase the red, however, and
the white shades until, at length, the mass shall be  red
and not white.   If one looks at his hand, he recognizes
that it is a white with a red shade ; the white is  the
natural color of the part, and the shade is of the blood ;
the hand of a dead man, in which there is no circula-
tion, is white.   If, now, the hand is hurt, the blood, on
the principle referred to, comes rushing to it from every
part of the system; thus it  quickly grows red, and  the
more the congestion,—that is, the  more blood,—the
redder it becomes.   Redness, then, is simply the pres-
ence of blood.
  Heat.—This has a twofold explanation:  first,  the
temperature of the blood itself.   A little blood, such as
circulates naturally in a  part, is not  felt to be hot,  be-
cause its temperature is modified by the atmosphere im-
pinging on every part of the superficies of the body; but
when excess of blood is'sent to any part, when in bulk
it is poured out, then the quantity antagonizes the  re-
frigerating influence.   This is  one  source of the heat
felt in an  inflamed part.  A second is friction.   In
inflammation the blood rushes along the vessels with 
ADDENDUM.               255
 a greatly increased velocity;  the pulse of the part  is
 felt  to be double  or  treble;  velocity, antagonized,
 correlates itself into heat.
   Pain.—Every part of the human system is plentifully
 endowed  with nerves.   Pain, in inflammation, results
 from the pressure of the excessive  bulk of blood upon
 these nerves.  The most simple illustration may be found
 in an aching tooth; the center of a tooth is an ivory-
 bounded cavity, in  which exists what is called its pulp,
 or flesh; in this pulp ramif/arteries, veins, and a deli-
 cate nerve.   Now, we have only to imagine an accident
 which shall inflame this pulp, by which we  have  seen
 that we mean the sending to it of  an excess of blood,
 to  recognize that  the nerve would be  crowded and
 worried ;  pain is its expression of such worriment, and
 whatever  might  be the modification made in a nerve
 through the  long persistence  of an  inflammation, the
 primary expression  of pain has only the single meaning
 of pressure, as witness the immediate cessation of such
 pain upon the removal  of pressure.
  Swelling.—This, imprimis, depends on the excess of
 blood in a part.   An ounce of anything would neces-
 sarily make a greater volume,  if uncompressed,  than
 would half an ounce.  Second, swelling is caused by
 effusions;  when  a blood-vessel  is overdistended, the
 water  of  the blood, or serum, as  it  is termed, oozes
 through the attenuated coats.  Lymph, another element
 of the  blood, also  is  effused,  or  secreted.   When  a
 swelling is of serum, it is elastic and like a water  bag;
 when of lymph, it is doughy and pitting.
  These, then, are the  expressions of the phenomena,
and thus are they to be understood.  Inflammation not 
256      ODD  HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN.
unfrequently  relieves  itself through  an effusion.   A
patient suffering from an  inflammatory attack breaks
out into  a profuse  perspiration, and  his  trouble  thus
finds end.  So, oftentimes,  is pain relieved through effu-
sion, and the whole train  of a local disease aborted.
Swelling, then, is seen to be a very simple matter, not,
as a rule, furnishing any source for alarm,  but rather
the reverse.

  I come now to take  leave of the reader, and, in doing
so, am minded to ask him to remember the mask of the
incognito we have met under.  If one has listeners,  it
is pleasanter to tell his thoughts than to keep them to
himself.   If the talks and reflections of these "Odd
Hours" have been at all relished, or have had found in
them any import of good, it might be that, on a future
occasion, objection will not be felt  to another visit from
John Darby. 
 
 
 
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