A physician, who for many years practiced his profession in the State of California, was called once to see the child of Mr. Doak, of Calveras County, living on the road between San Andreas and Stockton, and not far from the mining town of Campo Seco, or Dry Camp. He says: The patient was a little girl about ten years of age, bright and intelligent and one of twins, the other being a boy, equally bright and well-disposed. The primary symptoms had indicated inflammation of the stomach, which the attending physician had hopelessly combated, and finally, when by metastasis it attacked the brain, with other unfavorable symptoms, he was inclined to abandon the case in despair. It was at this juncture I was called in. The symptoms were exceedingly unfavorable, and my own opinion coincided with my professional brother's. However, we determined to go to work. A day and night of incessant watching, and the state of the patient caused us both to feel the case hopeless, and we only continued our attendance at the earnest solicitation of the child's mother. The anxious, care-worn and restless sorrow of the little brother, his deep grief as he saw his sister given over to the power of the King of Terrors, had attracted our attention. He would creep up to the bedside of his sister silently, with pale and tearful face, controlling his emotion with great effort, and then steal away again and weep bitterly. With a vague, indefinite idea of comforting the little fellow, I took him to my knee, and was about to utter some platitude, when the little fellow, looking me in the face, his own the very picture of grief, burst out with-- "Oh, Doctor, must sister die?" "Yes," I replied, "but,"-- Before I could go farther he again interrupted me: "Oh, Doctor, is there nothing, nothing that will save her? Can nobody, nobody save my sister?" For an instant the teachings of a tender and pious mother flashed over my mind. They had been long neglected, were almost forgotten. California, in those days, was not well calculated to fasten more deeply on the mind home teachings. There were very few whose religious training survived the ordeal, and for a long time I had hardly thought of prayer. But the question brought out with the vividness of a flash of lightning, and as suddenly, all that had been obscured by my course of life, and, hardly knowing what I did, I spoke to him of the power that might reside in prayer. I said, God had promised to answer prayer. I dared not allow the skeptical doubt, that came to my own mind, meet the ear of that innocent boy, and told him, more as my mother had often told me than with any thought of impressing a serious subject on his mind, "_That the prayers of little boys, even, God would hear_." I left that night with some simple directions, that were given more to satisfy the mother than from having the slightest hope of eventual recovery, promising to return next day.