An old schoolmate, who is a lawyer in a Western city, told me that of the more than two hundred lawyers of that city, twenty had practically all the law business, and of that twenty a half dozen got the big cases in which there was most money. It is largely so in every city and town. And what applies to the lawyer applies to the physician, though perhaps not to so great an extent. And while the fortunate few get most of the practice, and make most of the money, what are the unfortunate many doing? Holding on, starving, skimping, keeping up appearances, and, while young, hoping against hope for better days. But when hope long deferred has made the soul sick, and hope itself dies, what then? Keep up appearances, you are a professional man. You can't be a quitter. It would be humorous, were it not so pathetic, to see the old doctor who has dragged along for years, barely eking out a living, put on the silk hat of his more ambitious days and wear it with dignity along with his shiny threadbare trousers and short coat, making a desperate spurt to keep up with the dashing young fellow just out of school. _Failurephobia!_ Among professional men what a terrible disease it is! I have known it to drive a young man, who might have been happy and useful as a farmer or mechanic, into a suicide's grave. Such cases are not uncommon. Who are the M.D.s whose pictures and glaring ads. appear in those 15-cent papers published in Augusta, Me., and in many daily and even religious papers? Are they men who took to graft and disgraced their profession because they loved that kind of life, and the stigma it brings? Not in many cases. Most of them perhaps come from the ranks of ambitious fellows who lost out in the strife for legitimate practice, but who would not acknowledge failure, so launched into quackery, and became _notorious_ if they could not become noted. Strange as it may seem, the fact that a professional man is a notorious grafter abroad does not necessarily deprive him of social standing at home. I have in mind a man whose smug face appears in connection with a page of loud and lurid literature in almost every 15-cent _Grafters Herald_ from Maine to California; yet this man at home was pointed to with pride as an eminently successful man. He wore his silk hat to church, and the church of which he was a valued member was proud of the distinction he gave it. A Western city has an industry to which it "points with pride," and the pictures of the huge plant appear conspicuously placed in illustrated boom editions of the city's enterprising papers. This octopus reaches out its slimy tentacles to every corner of the United States, feeling for poor wretches smitten by disease, real or fancied. When once it gets hold of them it spews its inky fluids around them until they "cough up" their hard-earned dollars that go to perpetuate this "pride of the West."