“There are many things to amuse and instruct one in this sober old city, and I mean to give you a more elaborate history of them in my next letter. I don’t think I ever shall make a very great surgeon, because the dissecting room is a very unpleasant place to me. When engaged in it I can’t for the life of me keep my mind on the business before me, but, in spite of me, it will go straying off into the realms of philosophy. The first time I entered the dissecting room I felt unusually sad; the subject was a young man of powerful frame, well-shaped limbs, brawny chest and handsome face, whom I supposed to be about my own age. A feeling of horror thrilled through my whole frame as I saw the sharp, glittering steel inserted in his white flesh. I then and there became convinced that I never should master the science of surgery, if that was the only way it could be done. When the dead man’s brain and heart were taken out, I took the heart in my left hand and the brain in the other, seated myself as far away as I could without leaving the room, and began to philosophize in a most singular manner. What is this little dark red lump of flesh that I hold in my left hand? Answer--The human heart, the supposed seat of life, the little governor that regulates the quantity of blood that each tiny vein is entitled to as its share. This little lump of flesh puts all the small pumps in motion that move the red life through the human body. This little insignificant thing is the great throne where love holds his court; where all the passions assemble round to pay homage to the king of love. In what corner of this little ball does love hold his court? Where is the identical spot? How is it we can feel it, and not see it? How can so much delicious joy find room in this little bulk? How can it produce such heavenly joys, such ecstatic bliss, as I feel in my love for my Lottie? Then again, how can so small a bulk suffer such untold, indescribable torture as we endure when we love some beautiful object who returns scorn for true love? As I held the heart in my hand, I thought of Shakespeare’s wonderful creations of beauty, and asked myself the question, Was his great heart like this? How could a man possessing a little heart like this, compose such soul-inspiring poetry? Then I thought perhaps it was the brain where all those beautiful things originated, and I turned my attention to it. What was it? Nothing but a few ounces of soft, fatty substance. Is this the great spring from whence such brilliant ideas flow? Was the great Bard of Avon’s brain like this? How could such an insignificant mess of fat give life to such soul-stirring sentiment, such heaven-born inspiration? Was this little gob of fat all that Napoleon had to depend on to