He was visited about twice a week. I heard patiently all his complaints, and endeavored to be patient under all my disappointments, for disappointments I had to encounter at nearly every step. No active treatment whatever would have the general effect I desired and intended. If I gave him but a single dose of elixir paregoric for his nervousness, it only added, nine times in ten, to the very woes it was intended to relieve. My policy--and I fully believe it was the only true policy--was to leave him to himself and to Nature, as much as possible. Though I have spoken here of what I regarded as the true policy in the case then under my care, yet, after all, the truest course would have been to call for consultation some wiser head than my own. Another individual, even though he were no wiser than I, might have aided me most essentially, in compliance with, and in confirmation of, the good old adage--"Two eyes see more than one." Why, then, did I not call on some inquiring and highly experienced physician? It was not that I was too proud to do so, nor that I was too jealous of my reputation. It was not that I feared any evil result to myself. It was rather because I did not, at first, think it really necessary; and then, subsequently, when I supposed it to be really needful, I feared my patient would grudge the expense. This fear, by the way, was grounded in something more than mere conjecture. The proposal had been practically made, and had been rejected. In this general way things went on for some time. The friends grew uneasy, as they should have done; and one or two of them, now that it was almost too late, spoke of another physician as counsel. My own readiness and more than readiness for this seemed to have the effect to quiet the patient, though it had the contrary effect on his friends. They appeared to construe my own liberality and the admixture of modesty and conscientiousness, which were conspicuous in my general behavior, into self-distrust, and hence began themselves to distrust me. The patient's state of mind--for he was a man whose habits of thinking and feeling approximated very closely to those of the miser--more than once reminded me of some doggerel verses I have seen, perhaps in an old almanac, which are so pertinent in illustration of the point in my patient's character which these remarks are intended to expose, that I have ventured to insert them:-- "The miser Sherdi, on his sick-bed lying, Affrighted, groaning, fainting, wheezing, dying, Expecting every hour to lose his breath, Enters a Dervise: 'Holy Father, say, As life seems parting from this sinful clay, What can preserve me from the jaws of death?' "'Sacrifice, dear son, good joints of meat,-- Of lamb and mutton for the priest and poor. Nay, shouldst thou from the Koran lines repeat, Those lines might possibly thy health restore,'