"What business has she to go riding with that big clod-hopping lout? And what right has he to lend her his brown mare?" chafed Treherne, with a great deal more which I did not much attend to. At last, weary of playing Friar Lawrence to such a very uninteresting Romeo, I hinted, that if he disapproved of the young lady's behaviour, he ought to appeal to her own good sense, to her father, or somebody--or, since women understand one another best, get Lady Augusta Treherne to do it. "My mother! She never even heard of her. Why, you speak as seriously as if I were actually intending to marry her!" Here I could not help rousing myself a trifle. "Excuse me--it never struck me that a gentleman could discuss a young lady among his acquaintance, make a public show of his admiration for her, interfere with her proceedings or her conduct towards any other gentleman, and _not_ intend to marry her. Suppose we choose another subject of conversation." Treherne grew hot to the ears, but he took the hint and spared me his sentimental maunderings. We had afterwards some interesting conversation about a few cases of mine in the neighbourhood, not on the regular list of regimental patients which have lately been to me a curious study. If I were inclined to quit the army--I believe the branch of my profession which I should take up would be that of sanitary reform--the study of health rather than of disease, of prevention rather than cure. It often seems to me, that we of the healing art have began at the wrong end--that the energy we devote to the alleviation of irremediable disease would be better spent in the study and practise of means to preserve health. Thus, I tried to explain to Treherne, who will have plenty of money and influence, and whom, therefore, it is worth while taking pains to inoculate with a few useful facts and ideas; that one-half of our mortality in the Crimea was owing, not to the accidents of war, but to the results of zymotic diseases, all of which might have been prevented by common sense and common knowledge of the laws of health, as the statistics of our sanitary commission have abundantly proved. And, as I told him, it saddens me, almost as much as doing my duty on a battle-field, or at Scutari, or Renkioi, to take these amateur rounds in safe England, among what poets and politicians call the noble British peasantry, and see the frightful sacrifice of life--and worse than life--from causes perfectly remediable. Take, for instance, these cases, as set down in my note-book. Amos Fell, 40, or thereabouts, down with fever for ten days; wife and five sons; occupy one room of a cottage on the Moor, which holds two other families; says, would be glad to live in a better place, but cannot get it; landlord will not allow more cottages to be built. Would build himself a peat hut, but doubts if that would be permitted; so just goes on as well as he can.