I was pleased to find I had so tractable a patient. I paused for a moment, to consider in what way I should draw him out, and on what side I should attack him--whether I should argue calmly with him, and endeavour to stimulate his feelings of duty to his Maker, to himself and his poor daughter; or shake him roughly as a vain and sinful dreamer who had voluntarily swallowed a pernicious soporific, and try to awaken him, and keep him awake, after the manner of our remedial endeavours to save those who have attempted to poison themselves by laudanum. I saw, in an instant, that he was by far too strong-minded a man to be operated upon effectually by the mere charm of the imputed reach and strength of our cabalistic lore--an agent, if well employed, of great good in our profession--and too determined (for such resolutions are always, in some degree, a false result of reasoning powers) to be put from his purpose either by a firm pressure of logical authority, or the subtle and more dangerous means of good-humoured or severe satire. My course was clearly to endeavour to affect the form of his own reasoning, and, if possible, to invest it with a character which might be recognised as true by the peculiar, and, no doubt, morbid perceptions he possessed of moral truth. I began by securing his eye, which I saw was, at times, inclined to wander, or take on that unmeaning, dull, glazed aspect which people in the act of brooding over intense sorrows--as if the optic nerves were thereby paralysed--so often exhibit. "What train of mind are you in generally," said I, "when the wish to die, accompanied with the fortitude you have mentioned, comes upon you in its strongest form?" "I first fall into a state of low spirits," said he, "and then nae effort I can use will tak my mind aff my dead wife. I think for whole hours--sometimes on the hills, sometimes in the house, and sometimes in my bed--of our courtship, our marriage, our happy life, and her miserable, painful, untimely death. This feeds my sorrow, which grows stronger, and descends deeper and deeper, till it reaches my brain, and I am sunk in the darkness o' despair. To escape frae thoughts o' past sorrows that are owre strong to be borne, I try to look forward to the future; but, alas! I see naething there but the pain o' livin for a number o' comfortless years o' auld age, draggin after me, a memory clogged wi' past ills, and naething afore me but a jail, and want, and lingerin death." "These are false views of life," said I--"overstrained and morbid. I must teach you to think better. You have a daughter who will comfort you, and whom you are bound to support and protect."