I am finding it harder than ever this year to get a summer holiday. And while these little glimpses of the country merely sharpen my desire for more, I find myself telling myself sternly that I must really learn to be contented with them. And at any rate I have been enabled to see more of the hospital than for some time past; and, as you know, this is to be my last year there as a visiting physician. This afternoon, my junior being salmon-fishing in Norway, I thought that I would take the out-patients for the first time in twelve years; and the clinical assistant proving not unwilling to go and play tennis, I amused myself with seeing the lot of them. For there's no other commentary upon men and manners quite like a collection of out-patients at a large hospital. Listen therefore to a stalwart gentleman who earns twenty shillings a week, and doesn't stint himself in beer. "Debility, doctor," he said, "that's what's the metter with me." He dropped his voice huskily. "Domestic trouble," he added. "Dear me," I sympathised, feeling his pulse. "Serious?" "Twins," he said gloomily; "second lot I've 'ed in eighteen months; an' I think it's run me down." Your aff. brother, PETER. XXIV _To the Rev. Bruce Harding, S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay._ c/o HARRY CARTHEW, CROME LODGE, NEAR CAVERSHAM, BERKS, _September_ 14, 1910. MY DEAR BRUCE, I am very glad to hear that you have had such an excellent holiday in Switzerland, and brought home four or five more mountain scalps to your Cumberland wigwam. But it's rather sad that the little storm that was brewing at S. Peter's before you left should have burst in thunder and lightning during your absence. Knowing both Merridew and Rogers, I quite agree with you that it was probably inevitable, and may ultimately tend to a clearer atmosphere. Meanwhile however the little community makes war from opposite camps, and there is a great deal of unnecessary bitterness in their tactics that seems likely to increase when Rogers comes back from London. And, as you say, it's all rather sad and sordid, and only humorous because the parish is so small and the whole storm contained, as it were, in one of its afternoon teacups. But then most parishes are comparatively small, and we all have to live in one or other of them, and storms in teacups are apt to be just as devastating as any other kind of storm--even more so perhaps, because it's so much easier on these occasions to insist upon recommending one's own particular infusion of tannin, than to insert instead an unobtrusive drop or two of the calming milk of human kindness. Whereas cyclones have a habit of setting us shoulder to shoulder, by virtue of the unanimous discovery that they rather suddenly engender of the extraordinary unimportance of our differences.