This singular feature in an otherwise intelligent mind is a continual source of irritation to a foreigner, who has never had any experience of such turbidity of thought in matters that seem to him to require no exertion to grasp at once. You say to a man, for example, more for the purpose perhaps of having something to say than anything else, "How old are you?" A blank look of amazement comes over his countenance, much as though you had asked him if he had committed murder. "Do you mean me?" he asks. "Yes, I mean you; how old are you?" "How old am I?" and now the idea seems to have filtered into his brain, and the vacant, dazed look is replaced by a slight smile that ripples over his face, and he tells you his age. It is no exaggeration to say that all over this great empire, wherever the above questions have been put, the same comedy has invariably been gone through in getting a reply to them. This haziness of thought is especially annoying to the medical men who are in charge of general hospitals, where all classes of people come for treatment. One day a woman came to one of these to consult the foreign physician about her health. She was tall and severe-looking, with a face that forbade any attempt to trifle with her. She was evidently a person that never indulged in a joke, for the lines on her countenance were hard as though they had never been relaxed by any of the pleasantries or humours of life. You could fancy her being a hard-working, industrious housewife, but one that neither husband nor children would ever approach excepting with a certain diffidence and restraint.