so changing his character that plaster casts of his cranium taken at different periods showed corresponding modifications in the prominences. This practical example of what persistence might do was encouraging; and so Mark, stung by some stray bee from Mount Hymettus, wrote quires of plain verses, which he thought very fine and destined to stir the world of letters, but which were simply transpositions of ideas and similes of the master poets with which his mind was saturated. Could poets have been made other than by the hand of Nature, Mark would certainly have become one, for he strove with an indefatigable ardor that nothing could dampen to succeed; but the divine afflatus so charily bestowed was lacking, and he thrummed the lyre without evoking strains immortal. What phrenzy and foolscap were wasted--what moonlight walks indulged in, and sylvan groves haunted, to meditate and seek inspiration! How often he sauntered around the margin of the Passaic, watching the leap of the cataract and rise of its snowy mist, as its low thunder lulled him into delicious day dreams. Far into the night would he linger reclining against the bole of some tree, gazing with straining eyes towards Mr. Heath's villa, whose gray walls loomed in the moonlight like a feudal castle, to catch, perhaps, a glimpse of a shadow that might appear occasionally behind the curtains of a lighted room that he knew to be Edna's. Often had the faint sound of music or mirth, that reached him from the open drawing-room windows, filled him with envy and jealousy, as he thought of the Rev. Spencer Abbott and young Mumbie, who were constant visitors at the villa. Then, dismally homeward would he wend his way, go to his room, and spend the silent watches of the night racking his brains to commit his thoughts to paper. Quires, nay reams, were covered with superfine tropes and metaphors, as he strove to coin words that the world would not willingly let die. He ventured to show his lucubrations to Dr. Wattletop, but the reception they met with was neither flattering nor even encouraging. "My dear boy, drop all this," was the advice given. "Not only are you wasting precious time, but your taste and mind are becoming vitiated by the namby-pamby trash of modern rhymesters. If you must plagiarize, do it from Pope, or Milton, or Gray. Study them, or the master Shakespeare. Remember, as Coleridge said, poetry must be either music or sense, and I cannot say there is much of either in your verses. Get at the kernel. But after all, the study for a poetically inclined youth is medicine, singular as that may seem to you. If the desire be to awaken sublime ideas, investigate the abstruse problem of life. Follow the noblest calling, the art of healing, and seek to penetrate the arcana of Nature. I wish I could induce you to become one of us. Our profession greatly needs ardent and intelligent recruits, else we shall be overrun with quacks in every shape. Look at