"None. I have tried hard to find out; but I have altogether failed. She tells me there is nothing the matter with her, only she is so tired. What has she to tire her?" "If she is tired inside first, everything will tire her." "I wish you would try to find out, Smith." "I will." "Her mother died of a decline." "I know. Have you had no advice?" "Oh, yes! Dr. Wade is giving her steel-wine, and quinine, and all that sort of thing. For my part, I don't believe in their medicines. Certainly they don't do her any good." "Is her chest affected--does he say?" "He says not; but I believe he knows no more about the state of her chest than he does about the other side of the moon. He's a stupid old fool. He comes here for his fees, and he has them." "Why don't you call in another, if you are not satisfied?" "Why, my dear fellow, they're all the same in this infernal old place. I believe they've all embalmed themselves, and are going by clockwork. They and the clergy make sad fools of us. But we make worse fools of ourselves to have them about us. To be sure, they see that everything is proper. The doctor makes sure that we are dead before we are buried, and the parson that we are buried after we are dead. About the resurrection I suspect he knows as much as we do. He goes by book." In his perplexity and sorrow, the poor colonel was irritable and unjust. I saw that it would be better to suggest than to reason. And I partly took the homoeopathic system--the only one on which mental distress, at least, can be treated with any advantage. "Certainly," I said, "the medical profession has plenty of men in it who live on humanity, like the very diseases they attempt to cure. And plenty of the clergy find the Church a tolerably profitable investment. The reading of the absolution is as productive to them now, as it was to the pardon-sellers of old. But surely, colonel, you won't huddle them all up together in one shapeless mass of condemnation?" "You always were right, Smith, and I'm a fool, as usual.--Percy, my boy, what's going on at Somerset House?" "The river, uncle." "Nothing else?" "Well--I don't know. Nothing much. It's horribly slow!" "I'm afraid you won't find this much better. But you must take care of yourself." "I've made that a branch of special study, uncle. I flatter myself I _can_ do that."