than once assured me, an ardent admirer
of "the opposing sect."

In one of his most confidential moods, he disclosed to me the
startling fact that he had in early life been the victim of a
misplaced confidence. In an unguarded moment he entrusted the idol
of his heart to the safe keeping of a friend, in the whiteness
of whose soul he trusted as in a mother's love, while he, the
confiding Doctor, journeyed westward to seek a home.

"He knew not the doctrine of ill-doing,
Nor dreamed that any did."

Alas for human frailty, "the badge of all our race." Upon his
return after an absence of several moons, he found to his unspeakable
dismay that that same "friend" had taken to wife the idol whose
image had so long found lodgment in the Doctor's own sad heart.
Too late he realized, as wiser men have done before and since, that

"Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love."

The Doctor was much given at times to what he denominated "low down
talks" such as are wont when kindred souls hold close converse.
Seated in my office on one occasion, at the hour when churchyards yawn,
and being as he candidly admitted in a somewhat "reminiscent" mood,
he unwittingly gave expression to thoughts beyond the reaches of
our souls, when I made earnest inquiry, "Doctor, what in your
judgment as a medical man is to be the final destination of the
human soul?" The solemn hour of midnight, together with the no
less solemn inquiry, at once plunged the Doctor into deep thought.
First carefully changing his quid from the right to the left jaw, he
slowly and as if thoughtfully measuring his words, replied: "Brother
Stevenson, _the solar system are one of which I have given very
little reflection."_

It is a sad fact that in this world the best of men are not wholly
exempt from human frailties. Even in the noble calling of medicine
there have been at times slight outcroppings of a spirit of
professional jealousy. That the subject of these brief chronicles
was no exception to this infirmity will appear from a remark he
once made in regard to a professional contemporary whose practice had
gradually encroached upon the Doctor's beat. Said he: "They talk a
good deal about this Doc Wilson's practice; but I'll 'low that
my books will show a greater degree of mortality than what hisn
will."

The Doctor was one of the regular boarders at the historic inn
already mentioned. By long and faithful s