Though it can by no means be proved that the popular and almost adored Dr. Forest gave bread pills and innocuous medicines generally, yet it is exceedingly probable that he did, and his marvelous success goes far by way of corroboration. Apparently, he knew just what to do in all cases. Water he insisted upon so mercilessly that his patients became regularly habituated to taking a warm bath while they waited for his visit. To the questions of the better educated of his patients he used to say, “Lord bless you, how do I know? Do you think medicine a science whose every problem can be worked out by a formula like those of algebra or geometry? We knew precious little of the absolute value of medicines when all that is incontrovertible is admitted and all the rest rejected. One thing is certain, there is nowhere on this two-cent planet at present the conditions for perfect health, because there are nowhere the conditions for perfect happiness. Bless your heart! instead of being decrepit and played out at seventy or eighty years, we ought to be teaching boys how to turn double-back somersaults, or making sonnets to fresh and beautiful women who are great-grandmothers. Life, as we know it now, is but a miserable travesty of the real destiny of our race when we become integrally developed, and have brought the planet thoroughly under our united control. If a physician is up with the science of his time and a true man, about all he can say honestly is: keep your lungs, skin, liver, and kidneys in working order, lead an active, temperate life, possess your soul in quiet, and send for the doctor when you know you haven’t done these and want to shove the responsibility off upon him.” He was severe to many of his patients, but so popular that he had to manœuvre shrewdly to give the young Dr. Delano a chance to establish himself. Among the poor, the old, and especially the forlorn, like poor Mrs. Buzzell, he made his longest visits; and where he knew that love and sympathy were “indicated,” he gave them freely, as in the case of this lonely woman. He often caressed her thin hand after counting her pulse, held his cool, soft, magnetic hand long upon her forehead; sometimes closing her eyes thus while he talked gayly, told her comical anecdotes in his life, which made her laugh, and so stimulated some laggard function into working order. CHAPTER VI. CLARA AT STONYBROOK COLLEGE.