We sometimes read aloud together in the evening, oftenest from “Pickwick Papers,” having uproarious times there in the office, with no patients or nurses near. One evening, when Dr. Thorndike was away, Laidlaw brought in a book saying, “I’ve found a brand new author--they say it’s great--let’s try it.” It was Amélie Rives’s “The Quick or the Dead.” We began it gaily and innocently, at least I did, reading aloud by turns. From the start it was very fervid, and soon I, and I think the young men also, began to be embarrassed. Just as I was feeling uneasy and wondering how I was going to get out of it, a bright little woman physician whom we all knew, passing the office door and hearing our gales of laughter (for we were making all sorts of fun of it to relieve our embarrassment) stopped and asked what we were reading. She looked surprised on being told, but made no comment about it, and as she turned to go, asked casually if she could speak with me later, when I was at liberty. Glad of an excuse, I said I could stop then, and went with her. Telling me that she had read the book, she said she thought I would find it quite impossible to go on with it with the young men, and suggested, as a way out, that I slip down to the office after they had gone to their rooms, get the book and read it, then tell them I had already finished it; they would then, she said, read it by themselves, and soon drop the subject. That night I did as she advised. They grumbled and rallied me about being so eager that I couldn’t wait to finish it with them; but they soon let the subject rest. For years I blushed whenever I heard that book mentioned. It is the only book I ever read that I feel ashamed to admit having read, though now I have only the faintest recollection what it was all about. Our hospital life was a full one--much work and many emotions crowded in the days: patients coming to be operated; many operations meaning life or death, and even the less serious ones always approached by the patients with dread and apprehension. It fell to the house-officers to receive and reassure patients and their friends; to calm their anxiety; to inspire their confidence in the operators, and their hope for the outcome. Sometimes the apprehension of the patient, and his forebodings, so weighed me down, that I found it difficult to be very reassuring; but I learned in time to disregard these, and was then, of course, of more help to the patients.