"In times of peace there is only one profession that furnishes the active soldier: and that is the profession of medicine. It is the physician and the surgeon that the military virtues rest on; and the martial traits when there is no war. It is these men that bring those virtues and those traits undiminished from one war to the next war. There is no kind of manhood in the soldier, the fighting man, that is not in the fighting physician and fighting surgeon--fighting against disease. There is nothing that has to be changed in these two when war breaks out or when peace comes: their constant service fits them for either. In times of peace the only warlike type of man actively engaged in human life is the doctor and surgeon. Did you ever think of that?" said the older man, persuasively. The silence in the room grew deeper. "Tell me about the professions in the War: what did they do about it; how did they act?" "The professions divided: some going with North, some going with South; fighting on each side, fighting one another. The ministry dividing most bitterly and sending up their prayers on each side for the destruction of the other--to the same God. All except one: the profession of medicine remained indivisible. For that is the profession which has but a single ideal, a single duty, a single work, and but one patient--Man." The silence had become too deep for words. The young hunter quietly got up and lit his candle and squared himself in the middle of the floor, pale with the sacred fire of a youth's ideal. "I am going to be a Kentucky country doctor. Good night!" He strode heavily out of the room, and his stride on the stairway sounded like an upward march toward future glory. The man at the fire listened. Usually when the youth had reached his room above and set his candle on his stand beside his bed, he undressed there as with one double motion of shucking an ear of corn: half to right and half to left; and then the ear stood forth bared in its glistening whiteness and rounded out to perfect form with clean vitality. But now for a long time he heard a walking back and forth, a solemn tread: life's march had begun in earnest. He rose from his chair and tapped the ash out of his meerschaum. Through force of habit and old association with the race-course he looked at his timepiece. "I win that race in good time," he said. "That colt was hard to manage, obstreperous and balky." It had always been his secret wish that his nephew would enter the profession that he himself had spurned. Perhaps no man ever ceases to have some fondness for the profession he has declined, as perhaps a woman will to the last send some kind thoughts toward the man she has rejected. After winning a race, he always poured out a libation; and he went to his sideboard now and poured out a libation sixteen years old. And he did not pour it on the ground. * * * * *