I had a sporting friend--a doctor--with whom I often went snipe-shooting. This doctor was the best snipe-shot I have ever known. His bag was always packed, while mine was comparatively lean. On one of these occasions our trip was to a tide-marsh and island south of Seattle. Early in the hunt we crossed a slough when the tide was out and found the birds very numerous on the new hunting-ground. The doctor brought them down right and left, while I was slowly increasing the fatness of my pouch. The doctor's success and consequent enthusiasm made him oblivious of the flight of time and of the movement of the tide. He had patients to visit, and when the sun was disappearing behind the western clouds and hills, he suddenly remembered his obligations to them. When on our return we came to the slough, we found it full and overflowing; the water was fully eight feet in depth and twenty feet or more in width. There was a good deal of floating debris in the slough, and the doctor, being a very agile man, leaped from log to log and safely made the passage to the other shore. He said to me, "Come on, Judge; you can easily make it." I told him that I had never prided myself on my agility. "Well," he said, "I will make a bridge for you;" and with the use of a pole he gathered the floating logs together, so that in appearance they looked like a safe bridge. But I said to him, "Doctor, I have all the confidence in the world in you as a physician; but you will excuse me,--I have no confidence whatever in you as a bridge-builder." He said with a little impatience, "O, quit your nonsense and come over; I will show you that the bridge is perfectly safe;" so saying, he leaped upon it and disappeared in the water. He soon re-appeared, however; and as he crawled up the slimy bank, the water spouting out of him in every direction, I said: "Doctor, you look very undignified." He answered, "You go to ----," politely called Hades. I went down the slough, thinking he might be slightly out of temper, and found a safe crossing. I rowed him home--issuing an occasional mandate that he should take a certain medicine, of which I carried in my breast-pocket, a bottle for such occasions. The good doctor has gone to his long home. He sleeps in the bosom of his fathers and his God.