The hospital had been a favourite project of mine; from its start, unreasonably dear to me. Through the mounting difficulties which blockade such enterprises, I had hewn and hacked, I had fathered and doctored, I had trusteed and collected, I had subscribed and directed and persisted and prophesied and fulfilled, as one ardent person must in most humanitarian successes; and I had loved the success accordingly. I do not think it had ever once occurred to me to question myself as to the chemical proportions of my motives in this great and popular charity. Now, as I entered the familiar place, some query of this nature did indeed occupy my mind; it had the strangeness of all mental experiences consequent upon my new condition, and somewhat, if I remember, puzzled me. The love of healing? The relief of suffering? Sympathy with the wretched? Chivalry for the helpless? Generosity to the poor? Friendship to the friendless? Were these the motives, all the motives, the _whole_ motives, of him who had in my name ministered in that place so long? Even the love of science? Devotion to a therapeutic creed? Sacrifice for a surgical doctrine? Enthusiasm for an important professional cause? Did these, and only these, sources of conduct _explain_ the great hospital? Or the surgeon who had created and sustained it? Where did the motive deteriorate? Where did the alloy come in? How did the sensitiveness to self, the passion for fame, the joy of power, amalgamate with all that noble feeling? How much residuum was there in the solution of that absorption which (outside of my own home) I had thought the purest and highest of my interests in life? For the first of all the uncounted times that I had entered the hospital for now these many years, I crossed the threshold questioning myself in this manner, and doubting of my fitness to be there, or to be what I had been held to be in that place. Life had carried me gaily and swiftly, as it carries successful men. I had found no time, or made none, to cross-question the sources of conduct. My success had been my religion. I had the conviction of a prosperous person that the natural emotions of prosperity were about right. Added to this was something of the physician's respect for what was healthful in human life. Good luck, good looks, good nerves, a good income, an enviable reputation for professional skill, personal popularity, and private happiness,--these things had struck me as so wholesome that they must be admirable. Behind the painted screen which a useful and successful career sets before the souls of men I had been too busy or too light of heart to peer. Now it was as if, in the act or the fact of dying, I had moved a step or two, and looked over the edge of the bright shield.