Persons in search of the dramatic elements of our life in its reality would scarcely find them more developed than in the house of an eminent doctor. In the waiting-room, where patients gather and await their turn, what striking contrasts and vivid harmonies there are! Here is an unloved wife, who yet desperately clings to the life that has so little to offer here; and there is one so deeply loved that her husband would part with his all to buy one little year longer which they might spend together. Here is a man who might drop out of Society at once and never be missed; and there is another, of whom it is said in the town of his residence that he cannot possibly be spared, for there is no one, and even no dozen of men, who could fill his place. Yonder is one for whom his mother prays: “Oh, take him that he may do no more evil!” And here another for whom ten thousand people pray, “Oh, spare him that he may yet further bless us and glorify Thee!” And what breathless suspense there is in the consulting-room of the great man! No prisoner at the bar waits for the verdict of the jury with more consuming anxiety than does the innocent man, whose heart is full of his wife and children, as the perspiration stands in great drops on his forehead, while the sentence of hope or of doom is pronounced by the oracle. He may be wrong, and often is, this man whose fiat has such terrible power; but if he has a heart it must often know the acutest pangs of sympathy. Mr. Harris was pale but calm when Dr. Stapleton introduced him. Really, he did not share his friend’s fears. It was true that he had suffered much, but not enough to indicate any disease that might prove fatal. Of that he felt sure, or thought he did; but his eyes had read the faces of the men and women who had waited as he had, and his feelings had been greatly touched. It was more of them than of himself he thought while he answered the physician’s questions and submitted to his examination. He was surprised when the Doctor at last said, “If you can spare the time to wait I should like to call a friend who understands these cases even better than I.” “Certainly I can wait,” replied Harris; “I have no other errand in London but this.” “Then I will see if he can be summoned,” said the Doctor, as he went towards his telephone. “You are not quite sure whether there is anything the matter with me?” asked Harris. “Perfectly sure,” was the reply; “but there may be something that can be done.” The other doctor arrived, and Harris was not kept long in suspense. “I am sorry to tell you that yours is a hopeless case.” It was put bluntly, and yet the tones of the man’s voice were as gentle as he could make them. “There is no cure for me?” “I am afraid none; at least, we do not know of any.”