And then you will probably turn upon me and say, "But to cultivate this habit of forming proper mental pictures, I shall have to be at least a chemist, a physicist, a pathologist, a bacteriologist, to say nothing of a philosopher; and how can a single human being, however industrious, contain as many persons as these?" And of course he cannot. Upon no more than one branch of the tree of Healing will it be given to you to climb out a little farther than your fellows; but, at any rate, you can keep your eye upon the others. It is in this way alone that you can become a scientific physician in the best and broadest sense. And you can take my word for it that it will never be worth your while to become any other sort of a sawbones--an exacting prospect? I agree with you. And many an hour will come to you with the easy question, "Why lavish all this time and trouble in gathering up some very trifling grain of extra knowledge--knowledge that, in all probability, will never become of the least importance in your hands?" And then, perhaps, a moment will flash into your life when this very grain shall shape a million destinies. Are you prepared to live for that moment? I am almost tempted to finish my letter at this question mark; and the more so because the great public, or such of it as has been led away by a certain school of literary sentimentalists, has plastered my final mound of observation--shall we call it the human one?--with such a viscid layer of adulation that it has become a little hard for a self-respecting physician to take his stand there even for two and a half moments. Has ever, I wonder, a doctor figured in fiction or drama who, being neither a clown nor a fool, was not described as noble? Have we not tracked him on his rounds through unconscionable horrors, and wept big tears at his preposterous death-bed? No wonder such a fellow finds it hard to get his bills paid. To offer him mere money would seem little less than sacrilege. And yet, I think, you will agree with me that here is an aspect of medicine worth consideration. To the seeing eye and the tender hand there is no easier door into the warm heart of humanity. There is no other profession that will lead you quite so close to reality. And by this I don't mean realism in the modern sense, wherein, as it seems to me, the altogether ugly looms so disproportionately large. For after thirty years of tolerably wide opportunity I have still failed to find the altogether ugly. And though of course you will meet ugliness in plenty--a cancer that will find you shocked and, alas, largely impotent--yet, if you look long enough, and carefully enough, how often will you discover it to be but the shadow of some clearly shining spiritual beauty. No, you need not fear, I think, to tread behind the veil.