s were good for the
blood at times, and from that observation grew the whole doctrine of
medicine. That's my theory, my boy. Now cut off that pear-tree
branch."

I set the ladder right, and proceeded to cut and trim the injury,
thinking all the while what a pity it was that the trees should have
been so knocked about by the storm.

"Do you know who were the best gardeners in England in the olden times,
Grant?" said the old gentleman as he stood below whetting my knife.

"No, sir,--yes, I think I do," I hastened to add--"the monks."

"Exactly. We have them to thank for introducing and improving no end of
plants and fruit-trees. They were very great gardeners--famous
gardeners and cultivators of herbs and strange flowers, and it was thus
that they, many of them, became the doctors or teachers of their
district, and I've got an idea in my head that it was on just such a
morning as this that some old monk--no, he must have been a young monk,
and a very bold and clever one--here, take your knife, it's as sharp as
a razor now."

I stooped down and took the knife, and hanging my saw from one of the
rounds of the ladder began to cut, and the old gentleman went on:

"It must have been after such a morning as this, boy, that some monk
made the first bold start at surgery."

I looked down at him, and he went on:

"You may depend upon it that during the storm some poor fellow had been
caught out in the forest by a falling limb of a tree, one of the boughs
of which pinned him to the ground and smashed his leg."

"An oak-tree," I said, quite enjoying the fact that he was inventing a
story.

"No, boy, an elm. Oak branches when they break are so full of tough
fibre that they hang on by the stump. It is your elm that is the
treacherous tree, and snaps short off, and comes down like thunder."

"An elm-tree, then," I said, paring away.

"Yes, a huge branch of an elm, and there the poor fellow lay till some
one heard his shouts, and came to his help."

"Where he would be lying in horrible agony," I said, trimming away at
the bough.

"Wrong again, Grant. Nature is kinder than that. With such an injury
the poor fellow's limb would be numbed by the terrible shock, and
possibly he felt but little pain. I knew an officer whose foot was
taken off in a battle in India. A cannon-ball struck him just above the
ankle, and he felt a terrible blow, but it did not hurt him afterwards
for the time; and all he thought of was t