lk with a clergyman, she had a great deal better see one as
often as she liked, and run the risk of the excitement, than have a
hidden wish for such a visit and perhaps find herself too weak to see him
by-and-by.

The old Doctor knew by sad experience that dreadful mistake against which
all medical practitioners should be warned. His experience may well be a
guide for others. Do not overlook the desire for spiritual advice and
consolation which patients sometimes feel, and, with the frightful
mauvaise honte peculiar to Protestantism, alone among all human beliefs,
are ashamed to tell. As a part of medical treatment, it is the
physician's business to detect the hidden longing for the food of the
soul, as much as for any form of bodily nourishment. Especially in the
higher walks of society, where this unutterably miserable false shame of
Protestantism acts in proportion to the general acuteness of the
cultivated sensibilities, let no unwillingness to suggest the sick
person's real need suffer him to languish between his want and his morbid
sensitiveness. What an infinite advantage the Mussulmans and the
Catholics have over many of our more exclusively spiritual sects in the
way they keep their religion always by them and never blush for it! And
besides this spiritual longing, we should never forget that

"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,"

and the minister of religion, in addition to the sympathetic nature which
we have a right to demand in him, has trained himself to the art of
entering into the feelings of others.

The reader must pardon this digression, which introduces the visit of the
Reverend Chauncy Fairweather to Elsie Veneer. It was mentioned to her
that he would like to call and see how she was, and she consented,--not
with much apparent interest, for she had reasons of her own for not
feeling any very deep conviction of his sympathy for persons in sorrow.
But he came, and worked the conversation round to religion, and confused
her with his hybrid notions, half made up of what he had been believing
and teaching all his life, and half of the new doctrines which he had
veneered upon the surface of his old belief. He got so far as to make a
prayer with her,--a cool, well-guarded prayer, which compromised his
faith as little as possible, and which, if devotion were a game played
against Providence, might have been considered a cautious and sagacious
move.

When he had gone, Elsie ca