“Oh, come now!” he cried with ready raillery, “when a patient describes his symptoms to a doctor he does not pass to the next stage and name his disease.” Amidst present perplexities and the confusion of quickly gathering memories of earlier years, there was one distinctive characteristic of Karl’s Mahatmalike faculty which stood out prominently. The exercise of his sixth sense never affected his gay personality. If he showed anger or concern it was wholly vicarious, a sympathetic sentiment inspired by certain facts which influenced the lives of others. Once, indeed, to my knowing, if not more frequently, he had obtained a reflex or sub-conscious knowledge of Maggie Hutchinson’s emotions. But even in this instance my theory apparently held good. Alas for romance and the first shaft of love! Five years ago he was not only ready, after a pang or two, to fall in with her decree of banishment, but to-day I was to meet his fiancée in a young woman of the market type! This contradictory, self-effacing attitude was, of course, brought out more pronouncedly than ever by the haphazard views he expressed on the chance, or, it might be, the certainty, of his own early death. To see Karl, the personification of manly strength and good health, sitting in my room, and hear him coolly endorsing his father’s heart-broken statement as to his approaching dissolution, was the most absurdly exasperating experience ever vouchsafed to me. I know quite well that men and women of high degree--and by that I mean the true aristocracy of man, not the base metal so often stamped with misleading titles--will face unavoidable death with a sedateness, even a sober humor, which is the topmost rung of the long ladder climbed by human progress. A shipwreck, a battle, a lost cause--these are tangible things and excuse all. “This is the most glorious day of my life,” said the crippled Girondist, Sillery, when sentenced to death. “What, Valazé,” said Brissot to another, who fell in seeming faintness, “are you losing your courage?” “No, I am dying,” was the reply; Valazé had plunged a dagger into his heart. A British officer, about to be crucified by Chinese, was offered an easier death if he would admit that China was greater than England. His enemies knew some French but no English. His French was that of the provincial grammar school of other days, but he cried boldly: “La Hongleterre est la première nation de la monde!” They understood him, not being Frenchmen, and an enraged mandarin gave the signal for his instant execution. Well, you take off your hat to the memory of the brave, and you hope that, in similar straits, you would carry yourself with equal dignity.