to his
lips. His superb indifference gratified my artistic feeling more than it
wounded my personal sensibilities. Anything really superior in its line
claims my homage, and this man was the ideal bar-tender, above all
vulgar passions, untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of
the liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all
those lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any
of the roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir is the cheap,
all-powerful substitute.

Dr. Wilson was in bed, though it was early in the evening, not having
slept for I don't know how many nights.

"Take my card up to him, if you please."

"This way, Sir."

A man who has not slept for a fortnight or so is not expected to be as
affable, when attacked in his bed, as a French princess of old time
at her morning-receptions. Dr. Wilson turned toward me, as I entered,
without effusion, but without rudeness. His thick, dark moustache was
chopped off square at the lower edge of the upper lip, which implied a
decisive, if not a peremptory, style of character.

I am Doctor So-and-So. of Hub-town, looking after my wounded son. (I
gave my name and said _Boston_, of course, in reality.)

Dr. Wilson leaned on his elbow and looked up in my face, his features
growing cordial. Then he put out his hand, and good-humoredly excused
his reception of me. The day before, as he told me, he had dismissed
from the service a medical man hailing from ----, Pennsylvania, bearing
my last name, preceded by the same two initials; and he supposed, when
my card came up, it was this individual who was disturbing his slumbers.
The coincidence was so unlikely _a priori_, unless some forlorn parent
without antecedents had named a child after me, that I could not help
cross-questioning the Doctor, who assured me deliberately that the fact
was just as he had said, even to the somewhat unusual initials. Dr.
Wilson very kindly furnished me all the information in his power,
gave me directions for telegraphing to Chambersburg, and showed every
disposition to serve me.

On returning to the Herr House, we found the mild, white-haired old
gentleman in a very happy state. He had just discovered his son, in a
comfortable condition, at the United States Hotel. He thought that he
could probably give us some information which would prove interesting.
To the United States Hotel we repaired, then, in company with our
kind-hearted old