“This is a special treatment, because specially indicated,” he said. “You are thoroughly womanly in your nature, and you really need the magnetism of affection. You suffer more from your secluded life than most people would. Good-night; I will call soon,” and with that he left her. To the ordinary observer Mrs. Buzzell passed as a formal prude, cold and unattractive, but in reality, there was in her heart, an under-current of refined sensibility. To be sure it would not have been safe or prudent, at least, for any other man to attempt to kiss her cheek as the doctor had done, but she knew there was no guile in his heart, and she justly held his kindness and his deep sympathy with her as a most precious treasure. Coarse men are wont to scoff at the attraction women find in ministers and physicians, especially women whose social conditions are unfortunate; but the solution is very simple: physicians, at least, generally know more of human nature than other men do. This is true, of course, only of those of the nobler moral type. No others win the confidence of refined women, though their vanity may blind them to the wide difference there is between ordinary and extraordinary confidence, for every physician, if not every priest, receives a certain amount of confidence from the nature of his office. The physician of the high type to which Dr. Forest belongs, knows to a certainty the amount of mutual sympathy existing between their women patients and their husbands, when, as is often the case, there is no verbal confession of grievances; and even when, if such grievances exist, there is special care taken to conceal them. The kind-hearted and high-minded physician, especially if he be a man of the world, as all great physicians have invariably been, is the priestly confessor among Protestants. He no more thinks of betraying the confidences of his patients than the Catholic priest does those of the confessional. He is not restrained from a feeling of honor—there is no restraint in the case, for there is not the slightest temptation to talk of such confidences. It is not in that way that the physician regards them. He has received them by the thousand, and they excite no wonder in his mind; besides, who could understand them as he does? He receives them seriously enough, for whatever the cause, suffering is positive and demands his sympathy, and the true physician accords it as by instinct. To the vulgar, causes seem often very amusing. To the physician, he who “dies of a rose in aromatic pain,” is none the less dead than if hit by a cannon-ball.