e
beasts do my patients more good than any others. The monkeys are not a
wide enough cross; they do not stimulate sufficiently. The larger
carnivora are unsympathetic. The reptiles are worse than useless, and
the marsupials are not much better. Birds again, except parrots, are not
very beneficial; he may look at them now and again, but with the
elephants and the pig tribe generally he should mix just now as freely as
possible.

"Then, you know, to prevent monotony I should send him, say, to morning
service at the Abbey before he goes. He need not stay longer than the
_Te Deum_. I don't know why, but _Jubilates_ are seldom satisfactory.
Just let him look in at the Abbey, and sit quietly in Poets' Corner till
the main part of the music is over. Let him do this two or three times,
not more, before he goes to the Zoo.

"Then next day send him down to Gravesend by boat. By all means let him
go to the theatres in the evenings--and then let him come to me again in
a fortnight."

Had the doctor been less eminent in his profession I should have doubted
whether he was in earnest, but I knew him to be a man of business who
would neither waste his own time nor that of his patients. As soon as we
were out of the house we took a cab to Regent's Park, and spent a couple
of hours in sauntering round the different houses. Perhaps it was on
account of what the doctor had told me, but I certainly became aware of a
feeling I had never experienced before. I mean that I was receiving an
influx of new life, or deriving new ways of looking at life--which is the
same thing--by the process. I found the doctor quite right in his
estimate of the larger mammals as the ones which on the whole were most
beneficial, and observed that Ernest, who had heard nothing of what the
doctor had said to me, lingered instinctively in front of them. As for
the elephants, especially the baby elephant, he seemed to be drinking in
large draughts of their lives to the re-creation and regeneration of his
own.

We dined in the gardens, and I noticed with pleasure that Ernest's
appetite was already improved. Since this time, whenever I have been a
little out of sorts myself I have at once gone up to Regent's Park, and
have invariably been benefited. I mention this here in the hope that
some one or other of my readers may find the hint a useful one.

At the end of his fortnight my hero was much better, more so even than
our friend the doctor had expe