urned gravely, "I am sorry to tell you it is a very
dangerous malady."

"Nonsense," said I, "I don't believe it,"--for I thought it was only a
doctor's trick, and one I had tried often enough myself.

"Thank you," said he, "you are a very ill man, and a fool besides. Good
morning." He forgot to ask for a fee, and I remembered not to offer one.

Several months went by; my money was gone; my clothes were ragged, and,
like my body, nearly worn out; and I am an inmate of a hospital. To-day
I feel weaker than when I first began to write. How it will end I do not
know. If I die, the doctor will get this pleasant history; and if I
live, I shall burn it, and, as soon as I get a little money, I will set
out to look for my little sister, about whom I dreamed last night. What
I dreamed was not very agreeable. I thought I was walking up one of the
vilest streets near my old office, when a girl spoke to me,--a
shameless, worn creature, with great sad eyes, not so wicked as the rest
of her face. Suddenly she screamed aloud, "Brother! Brother!" and then,
remembering what she had been,--with her round, girlish, innocent face,
and fair hair,--and seeing what she was, I awoke, and cursed myself in
the darkness for the evil I had done in the days of my youth.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] _Aurum_, used in religious melancholy (see Jahr,) and not a bad
remedy, it strikes me.

"THE LIE."

Many years ago--now more than two hundred and fifty--some one in England
wrote a short poem bearing the above emphatic title, which deservedly
holds a place in the collections of old English poetry at the present
day. It is a striking production, familiar, no doubt, to most lovers of
ancient verse, and, although numbering only about a dozen stanzas, has
outlasted many a ponderous folio.

I say, indefinitely enough, that this little poem was written by _some_
one, and strange as it may appear, the name of that one is still in
doubt. Its authorship was attributed, by Bishop Percy and others, to Sir
Walter Raleigh, and sometimes with the fanciful addition, that he wrote
it the night before his execution. The piece, however, was extant many
years before the world was disgraced by that deed of wickedness.

After a while it began to be questioned whether the verses were really
written by Sir Walter. Some old-poetry mouser appears to have lighted on
an ancient folio volume, the work of Joshua Sylvester, and found among
its contents a poem called "The Soul's