The first taste of real wild life, the first taste of any woods life, since the camp-meeting days, came to me one summer while in U----, when, joining a jolly crowd of young people, with three elders, we camped on Lake Piseco in the Adirondacks for two happy weeks. After leaving the outposts of civilization, driving over a rough corduroy road for many miles, we camped on that wild mountain lake in a log-camp; rowed, sailed, fished, swam, tramped, climbed mountains, and, one memorable night, having followed all day the T-lake trail (a blazed trail through the deep forest), slept on a bed of boughs in an open camp. Another night we paddled out with a jacklight and saw a deer feeding among the lily pads--a never-to-be-forgotten sight. How flat and cramped and artificial seemed the city life to which we returned after those care-free days in the woods! But I was soon again absorbed in the routine of practice, and in the human problems confronting me. One of the saddest things in connection with my practice was the loss of a little patient with capillary bronchitis, a lovely child of three. I had done all I could to save her, had had good counsel, and had fought desperately. The defeat came to me as a terrible blow. I reproached myself for not having relinquished the case, feeling sure it was my incompetency that was at fault; that some other physician might have saved her. The continued confidence which the family showed in me was consoling, but I think many such experiences would have tempted me to abandon medicine entirely. After the third year of practice, my outlook as a physician, though by no means brilliant, was encouraging. My practice was steadily growing, my interests widening, friends and acquaintances increasing. Economy was still necessary, but I had passed through the trying time when expenses far exceeded income, through that when the income crept up till it equalled expenses, and on to that when it exceeded them. Now each month when Father looked over my books he nodded satisfactorily. To him my success was assured. At this juncture came an urgent call to leave all that I had gained and engage in an entirely new field of medical work--the care of the insane in a distant part of the state--a branch of medicine toward which I had had a strong leaning in College. I found myself in an unenviable state of indecision, but the seductive letters of the genial Superintendent at the institution at M---- decided me to go to Albany and take the Civil Service examination, and, that being satisfactorily passed, to go on to M---- on a visit of investigation. The visit was most enjoyable; the new life and work drew me powerfully; the assured salary was a great temptation, promising freedom from financial strain; the friendly physicians I met there--all conspired to make me consent to return there for a trial month, as soon as I could arrange matters in U----.