There are five hundred of my lady readers, at the very least, who can easily guess the reason why Medicus did not appear before them so regularly last summer. “Five hundred!” I think I hear some girls say; “why are these five hundred in the secret? And what about all the other thousands?” Stay, and I will tell you. For four months this last season I was “on the road,” travelling in my own chariot—I am surely not wrong in calling it a chariot, seeing it is twenty feet in length—throughout the length and breadth of Merrie England, and I put down the minimum of Girl’s Own readers who visited this chariot and its owner at five hundred, though, seeing that schools with their teachers, numbering from twenty to seventy, sometimes paid a visit to me, all of whom were ardent admirers of the “beautifully and tastefully illustrated G. O. P.”—the girls’ own words—a thousand might be nearer the mark. But what, it may be asked, has this to do with the non-appearance of Medicus before his readers? Why, everything; because I find it all but impossible to do literary work “on the road.” I might have done more, though. “I only wish I had.” And these words form the text on which I desire this month to speak a few homely words to my girls, young or not young. “I only wish I had.” How often a medical man hears those same words; spoken, it may be, with blanched lips, by some poor mortal who is languishing on a bed of sickness and pain. “I only wish I had.” Had what? Taken better care of health while it lasted. I sat by the bedside of a poor girl some years ago, and heard her repeat those same words frequently. I had somewhat more time to spare then than I have now, or I could not have sat there for an hour or two at a time reading to her or to myself. She did not speak much, being in the final stage of consumption, but she assured me again and again it was “such company” to have me there, so what could I do? “I wish I had.” These words, it seemed to me, were too often on her lips. Sometimes it was only the first two words, “I wish,” she breathed, as if the weakened lungs and voice refused to add the others. I think I see Esther D—— even now, a long, thin, pale hand on the coverlet, a white, thin face, with a flush on the high cheeks, little blue veins meandering over the temples, and sad blue eyes, with dark dilated and glistening pupils. “I wish I had.” Wish she had what? Taken a word or two of advice I gave her in a friendly way, just before she started for the seaside on a holiday trip. She looked bright, strong, and beautiful that day, though I could tell, from her transparent skin, her too soft hair and drooping eyelashes, that in her veins were the seeds of our island illness, and that it would need but little to fan it into flame. “I mean to enjoy myself thoroughly,” she said, her eyes dancing with good humour.