very commonly flock to in order to guess whether they would be
likely to prove sensible practitioners. Charlatanism always hobbles on
two crutches, the tattle of women, and the certificates of clergymen, and
I am afraid that half the women doctors will be too much under both those
influences."

Lurida believed in Dr. Butts, who, to use the common language of the
village, had "carried her through" a fever, brought on by over-excitement
and exhausting study. She took no offence at his reference to nursery
gossip, which she had learned to hold cheap. Nobody so despises the
weaknesses of women as the champion of woman's rights. She accepted the
doctor's concession of a fair field and open trial of the fitness of her
sex for medical practice, and did not trouble herself about his suggested
limitations. As to the imaginative tendencies of women, she knew too
well the truth of the doctor's remark relating to them to wish to
contradict it.

"Be sure you let me have your paper in season for the next meeting,
doctor," she said; and in due season it came, and was of course approved
for reading.

XIII

DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER.

"Next to the interest we take in all that relates to our immortal souls
is that which we feel for our mortal bodies. I am afraid my very first
statement may be open to criticism. The care of the body is the first
thought with a great many,--in fact, with the larger part of the world.
They send for the physician first, and not until he gives them up do they
commonly call in the clergyman. Even the minister himself is not so very
different from other people. We must not blame him if he is not always
impatient to exchange a world of multiplied interests and ever-changing
sources of excitement for that which tradition has delivered to us as one
eminently deficient in the stimulus of variety. Besides, these bodily
frames, even when worn and disfigured by long years of service, hang
about our consciousness like old garments. They are used to us, and we
are used to them. And all the accidents of our lives,--the house we dwell
in, the living people round us, the landscape we look over, all, up to
the sky that covers us like a bell glass,--all these are but looser
outside garments which we have worn until they seem a part of us, and we
do not like the thought of changing them for a new suit which we have
never yet tried on. How well I remember that dear ancient lady, who
lived well into the last decade o