oung man, shy and very unassuming; but he had remarkable gifts.
He entered the hospital with a scholarship, and during
the five years of the curriculum gained every prize that was
open to him. He was made house-physician and house-surgeon.
His brilliance was allowed by all. Finally he was elected to
a position on the staff, and his career was assured. So far
as human things can be predicted, it was certain that he would
rise to the greatest heights of his profession. Honours and
wealth awaited him. Before he entered upon his new duties he
wished to take a holiday, and, having no private means,
he went as surgeon on a tramp steamer to the Levant.
It did not generally carry a doctor, but one of the senior
surgeons at the hospital knew a director of the line,
and Abraham was taken as a favour.

In a few weeks the authorities received his resignation of the
coveted position on the staff. It created profound
astonishment, and wild rumours were current. Whenever a man
does anything unexpected, his fellows ascribe it to the most
discreditable motives. But there was a man ready to step into
Abraham's shoes, and Abraham was forgotten. Nothing more was
heard of him. He vanished.

It was perhaps ten years later that one morning on board ship,
about to land at Alexandria, I was bidden to line up with the
other passengers for the doctor's examination. The doctor was
a stout man in shabby clothes, and when he took off his hat I
noticed that he was very bald. I had an idea that I had seen
him before. Suddenly I remembered.

"Abraham," I said.

He turned to me with a puzzled look, and then, recognizing me,
seized my hand. After expressions of surprise on either side,
hearing that I meant to spend the night in Alexandria, he
asked me to dine with him at the English Club. When we met
again I declared my astonishment at finding him there. It was
a very modest position that he occupied, and there was about
him an air of straitened circumstance. Then he told me his story.
When he set out on his holiday in the Mediterranean he
had every intention of returning to London and his appointment
at St. Thomas's. One morning the tramp docked at Alexandria,
and from the deck he looked at the city, white in the
sunlight, and the crowd on the wharf; he saw the natives in
their shabby gabardines, the blacks from the Soudan, the noisy
throng of Greeks and Italians, the grave Turks in tarbooshes,
the sunshine and the blue sky; a