lecule and atom has more than we think.

Have you ever had any personal experience of dermoid cysts? We had one
in Cullingworth's practice just before his illness, and we were both
much excited about it. They seem to me to be one of those wee little
chinks through which one may see deep into Nature's workings. In this
case the fellow, who was a clerk in the post office, came to us with a
swelling over his eyebrow. We opened it under the impression that it was
an abscess, and found inside some hair and a rudimentary jaw with teeth
in it. You know that such cases are common enough in surgery, and that
no pathological museum is without an example.

But what are we to understand by it? So startling a phenomenon must have
a deep meaning. That can only be, I think, that EVERY cell in the
body has the power latent in it by which it may reproduce the whole
individual--and that occasionally under some special circumstances--some
obscure nervous or vascular excitement--one of these microscopic units
of structure actually does make a clumsy attempt in that direction.

But, my goodness, where have I got to? All this comes from the
Birchespool lamp-posts and curb-stones. And I sat down to write such a
practical letter too! However, I give you leave to be as dogmatic and
didactic as you like in return. Cullingworth says my head is like a
bursting capsule, with all the seeds getting loose. Poor seed, too, I
fear, but some of it may lodge somewhere--or not, as Fate pleases.

I wrote to you last on the night that I reached here. Next morning I set
to work upon my task. You would be surprised (at least I was) to see
how practical and methodical I can be. First of all I walked down to the
post-office and I bought a large shilling map of the town. Then back I
came and pinned this out upon the lodging-house table. This done, I set
to work to study it, and to arrange a series of walks by which I should
pass through every street of the place. You have no idea what that means
until you try to do it. I used to have breakfast, get out about ten,
walk till one, have a cheap luncheon (I can do well on three-pence),
walk till four, get back and note results. On my map I put a cross for
every empty house and a circle for every doctor. So at the end of that
time I had a complete chart of the whole place, and could see at a
glance where there was a possible opening, and what opposition there was
at each point.

In the meantime I had enlisted a mos