"Do you?" he asked, abruptly. "It makes me uncomfortable," I replied, candidly. "I don't know that I can say more than that. I find it embarrassing." "That is straightforward," said the great physician. "There is at least no diseased casuistry about you. I do not regard the indications as unfavourable." He said this with something of the professional manner; it amused me, and I smiled. "Take the case, Doctor, if you will," I humbly said. "I could not have happened on any person to whom I would have been so willing to intrust it." "We will consider the question," he said gravely. In this remarkable community, and under the guidance of this remarkable man, I now began a difficult and to me astonishing life. The first thing which happened was not calculated to soothe my personal feeling: this was no less than the discovery that I really had nothing wherewith to compensate the citizens who had provided for the comfort of my child and of myself; in short, that I was no more nor less than an object of charity at their hands. I writhed under this, as may be well imagined; and with more impatience than humility urged that I be permitted to perform some service which at least would bring me into relation with the commercial system of the country. I was silenced by being gently asked: What could I do? "But have you no sick here?" I pleaded, "no hospitals or places of need? I am not without experience, I may say that I am even not without attainment, in my profession. Is there no use for it all, in this state of being which I have come to?" "Sick we have," replied the surgeon, "and hospitals. I myself am much occupied in one of these. But the diseases that men bring here are not of the body. Our patients are chiefly from among the newly arrived, like yourself; they are those who are at odds with the spirit of the place; hence they suffer discomfort." "They do not harmonize with the environment, I suppose," I interrupted eagerly. I was conscious of a wish to turn the great man's thought from a personal to a scientific direction. It occurred to me with dismay that I might be selected yet to become a patient under this extraordinary system of things. That would be horrible. I could think of nothing worse. I proceeded to suggest that if anything could be found for me to do, in this superior art of healing, or if, indeed, I could study and perfect myself in it, I was more than willing to learn, or to perform. "Canst thou heal a sick spirit?" inquired my friend, solemnly. "Canst thou administer holiness to a sinful soul?" I bowed my head before him; for I had naught to say. Alas, what art had I, in that high science so far above me, that my earth-bound gaze had never reached unto it?