IN the course of Mr. Bailey’s attendance upon Mary, we had frequent opportunities of conversation, and, as I feel desirous of turning the conversation to those points on which persons feel most capable, as well as most desirous of talking, we frequently touched upon medical subjects. One day I told him my fears that both Mary and myself were consumptive, and that we had often talked about the possibility of our being removed in this way. He said, in reply, that Mrs. M— was not a consumptive subject, at least he had discovered nothing as yet which led him to suppose it; and that, with regard to myself, whatever predisposition I might have had towards it in early life, it had since taken another course. I wished to know what he meant by its having gone off in a different channel, even supposing that the predisposition once existed, when he told me the following anecdote:—His father was a medical man and accustomed to speak his mind without reserve. He used to visit the C—s in the place where they then lived, and knowing their constitutions pretty accurately he used to say, the B—s (meaning his own family) will go off into livers, and the C—s into lungs, intimating that these disorders would carry them off. Fanny, however (who was one of the C—s, and similarly deformed with myself), he thought, owing to her form would out-live them all, and escape the family disease. The B—s removed from the place, and Mr. B— having occasion to go there again after about twenty years’ absence, was naturally led to inquire after his old friends, when he found that all of them, excepting Fanny, had been removed by consumption, and that she, feeling her spirits affected by living in the place where all her family had died, had gone either to London, or some such place, for society, but was otherwise quite well. Mr. B— then told me, that he had no doubt that this was the case with myself also, and that very many similar cases had occurred. I had often thought that I could trace much spiritual benefit as resulting from my bodily form; nay, I have even been led to thank God for it, conceiving it very probable that it had been the saving of my soul; but little did I imagine that it conduced in any way to my bodily comfort, and that it has probably been the saving of my life. O my dear sister, how little do we know of the goodness of the Lord towards the children of men; and how little, with our present imperfect powers, shall we ever be able to know in this present world; but what we do know tends to show us in characters written as it were with a sunbeam, “HE DOETH ALL THINGS WELL.” * * * * * Extracted from a letter to his sister, dated May 17, 1817:— “Happy in married life.