hat's about the way it usually goes. It may be that my views are
colored by my lacking three or four inches of six feet, but I am
sometimes strongly inclined to believe that every man--big or little--is
given about the same amount of will or vital power, and the bigger
and more lumbering the body he has to move with it, the less he
accomplishes, and the sooner it is exhausted. You have found, I have
no doubt, that as a rule the broad-chested, muscular six-footers, whose
lives have ever passed at hard work in the open air, groan and sigh
incessantly under the burden of minor afflictions, worry every one with
their querulousness, moan for their wives, mothers, or sweethearts, and
the comforts of the homes they have left, and finally fret and grieve
themselves into the grave, while slender, soft-muscled boys bear real
distress without a murmur, and survive sickness and wounds that by all
rules ought to prove fatal."

"There is certainly a good deal in that; but what irritates me now is a
display of querulous tyranny."

"Well, you know what Dr. Johnson says: 'That a sick man is a scoundrel.'
There is a basis of truth in that apparent cruelty. It is true that
'scoundrel' is rather a harsh term to apply to a man whose moral
obliquities have not received the official stamp in open court by a jury
of his peers. The man whose imprudences and self-indulgences have made
his liver slothful, his stomach rebellious, and wrecked his constitution
in other ways, may--probably does--become an exasperating little tyrant,
full of all manner of petty selfishness, which saps the comfort
of others, as acid vapors corrode metals, but does that make him a
'scoundrel?' Opinions vary. His much enduring feminine relatives
would probably resent such a query with tearful indignation, while
unprejudiced outsiders would probably reply calmly in the affirmative."

"What is the medical man's view?" asked Rachel, much amused by this cool
scrutiny of what people are too often inclined to regard as among the
"inscrutable providences."

"I don't speak in anything for the profession at large, but my own
private judgement is that any man is a scoundrel who robs others of
anything that is of value to them, and he is none the less so when he
makes his aches and pains, mostly incurred by his gluttony, passions or
laziness, the means of plundering others of the comforts and pleasures
which are their due."

Going into the wards one morning, Rachel found that