What a mass of instruction was thrust upon us that second year! I enjoyed most the lectures of our professor in _materia medica_. A charming man, enthusiastic, fluent, apt at illustration--a more ready and engaging speaker I have never heard. Taking all he said as gospel-truth, I was not a little disturbed toward the close of that year to hear the seniors insinuate that he never spoiled a story for the truth’s sake; that he would tell of some wonderful case one year, ascribing the favourable termination to a certain remedy, and the next year would forget and tell of it under quite another remedy! Each disclosure of this kind came as a shock; it was so difficult--it is, even now--to believe that people are not what they seem. One man, our professor in pathology, never swerved one jot or tittle from the truth. This trait was so strong that he seemed always to be telling us what _not_ to believe; he was for ever exposing shams and false theories, dubbing them “all fol-de-rol.” He gave us clear, concise pictures of diseases; told what measures to adopt to relieve them; what remedies to rely on, so far as remedies could be of service; but never failed to impress upon us that “the books lie, and doctors lie,” if they claim that cases follow the typical courses so beautifully pictured; or that remedies, however well selected, will invariably relieve. There was a touch of peevishness in his attempts to make us chary about believing the stock statements in the books. I had a great liking for him; his earnestness appealed to me. Abrupt and brusque as he was, on the rare occasions when he smiled, his smile had that distinctive charm that an infrequent smile always lends to a stern, serious face. He was an excellent offset to the optimism and enthusiasm of our professor in _materia medica_. (A few years ago he came on as guest of honour and read a paper at our State Medical Society meeting in Brooklyn. He looked much older, his hair was thinned and white, but his voice had the old scornful ring, and carried me back to those student days in Boston; every familiar inflection was a fresh delight; and to make it more realistic, there was dear Dr. Wilkins who had come on, too--the Miss Wilkins who had so mothered me in college--past and present were strangely blended that day: on the platform Dr. “Conrad,” whose tones made me a student again; by my side the class-mate who had sat with me in the old days and listened to those same tones; while all around me were also friends and associates of to-day, else I surely should have felt myself a girl again and back in the old lecture room.)