her with a heartiness which if they had been less unlike, would
have been impossible.

It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other. The
Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her friend.
All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her bodily
exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought. She would fling
open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had any message for
her. Her teachers had compared her way of reading to the taking of an
instantaneous photograph. When she took up the first book on Physiology
which Dr. Butts handed her, it seemed to him that if she only opened at
any place, and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning up, as a moist
sponge absorbs water. "What can I do with such a creature as this?" he
said to himself. "There is only one way to deal with her, treat her as
one treats a silkworm: give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its
own cocoon. Give her the books, and she will spin her own web of
knowledge."

"Do you really think of studying medicine?" said Dr. Butts to her.

"I have n't made up my mind about that," she answered, "but I want to
know a little more about this terrible machinery of life and death we are
all tangled in. I know something about it, but not enough. I find some
very strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I want to be able
to silence them when they attempt to proselyte me to their whims and
fancies. Besides, I want to know everything."

"They tell me you do, already," said Dr. Butts.

"I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!"
exclaimed The Terror.

The doctor smiled. He knew what it meant. She had reached that stage of
education in which the vast domain of the unknown opens its illimitable
expanse before the eyes of the student. We never know the extent of
darkness until it is partially illuminated.

"You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the most
ignorant young lady that ever graduated there," said the doctor. "They
tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record since the
school was founded."

"What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in our small aquarium,
to be sure!" answered The Terror. "He was six inches long, the
monster,--a little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with! What did
you hand me that schoolbook for? Did you think I did n't know anything
about the human body?"

"You said you were suc