seen or dreamed he
save at the cavern. These looked dangerous enough, but yet quiet. A
treacherous stillness, however,--as the unfortunate New York physician
found, when he put his foot out to wake up the torpid creature, and
instantly the fang flashed through his boot, carrying the poison into his
blood, and death with it.

Mr. Bernard kept these strange creatures, and watched all their habits
with a natural curiosity. In any collection of animals the venomous
beasts are looked at with the greatest interest, just as the greatest
villains are most run after by the unknown public. Nobody troubles
himself for a common striped snake or a petty thief, but a cobra or a
wife-killer is a centre of attraction to all eyes. These captives did
very little to earn their living, but, on the other hand, their living
was not expensive, their diet being nothing but air, au naturel. Months
and months these creatures will live and seem to thrive well enough, as
any showman who has then in his menagerie will testify, though they never
touch anything to eat or drink.

In the mean time Mr. Bernard had become very curious about a class of
subjects not treated of in any detail in those text-books accessible in
most country-towns, to the exclusion of the more special treatises, and
especially of the rare and ancient works found on the shelves of the
larger city-libraries. He was on a visit to old Dr. Kittredge one day,
having been asked by him to call in for a few moments as soon as
convenient. The Doctor smiled good-humoredly when he asked him if he had
an extensive collection of medical works.

"Why, no," said the old Doctor, "I haven't got a great many printed
books; and what I have I don't read quite as often as I might, I'm
afraid. I read and studied in the time of it, when I was in the midst of
the young men who were all at work with their books; but it's a mighty
hard matter, when you go off alone into the country, to keep up with all
that's going on in the Societies and the Colleges. I'll tell you, though,
Mr. Langdon, when a man that's once started right lives among sick folks
for five-and-thirty years, as I've done, if he has n't got a library of
five-and-thirty volumes bound up in his head at the end of that time,
he'd better stop driving round and sell his horse and sulky. I know the
bigger part of the families within a dozen miles' ride. I know the
families that have a way of living through everything, and I know the