in his little mercantile enterprise was enabling him to support a widowed mother and younger brother and sister, whose home was in a distant State. He had obtained the entree to the house of sorrow and poverty through his Church associations, and not only his substantial aid, but his extremely efficient services as nurse, soothed the last days of the old lady, and relieved her anxiety in behalf of her two little daughters of ten and twelve years — ^her only remaining charge. The eldest of the two girls was a shy little maiden, whose modesty and refinement bespoke the training she had received from her who now lay stricken with inevitable death. After the last sad rites we knew nothing of the family save the assurance that they were "provided for" — how, and by whom, we scarcely cared to inquire, and the circumstance was displaced from our memory by fresh scenes of trouble and desolation which the kaleidoscope of a doctor's life brings ever before his eyes.
"Ten years afterward we were summoned to visit a young and beautiful woman, whose luxurious surroundings be- spoke the bride, even if the exultant mien of the noble form by her bedside had been wanting. They were the shy little girl and the generous youth of the death scene — she grown to a beautiful woman, and he one of the "substantial men" of the city — prominent in business and social circles as the man of open heart and purse. But she lay ill now, and the tenderness of his manner, the delicacy of his attentions, were beyond expression. A pregnancy, of which this ill- ness was the announcement, produced in her system that degree of irritation — ^happily so seldom witnessed — that one after another of her vital organs became the seat of inflammatory action, which at length involved the kidneys, and there was little hope of her recovery.
