t tell all
their customers. The very next day I had a patient brought me: a black
hound, with tan spots over his eyes, whose leg had been smashed by a
badly-aimed spear: I can see him now! Others followed; feathered or
four-footed sufferers; and this was the beginning of my surgical career.
The invalid birds on the trees I still owe to my old allies the barbers.
I only occasionally take beasts in hand. The lame children, whom you
saw in the garden, come to me from poor parents who cannot afford a
surgeon's aid. The merry, curly-headed boy who brought you a rose just
now is to go home again in a few days.--But to return to the story of my
youth.

"The more serious events which gave my life this particular bias
occurred in my twentieth year, when I had already left even the high
school behind me; nor was I fully carried away by their influence till
after my uncle had procured me several opportunities of proving my
proficiency in my calling. I may say without vanity that my speeches won
approval; but I was revolted by the pompous, flowery bombast, without
which I should have been hissed down, and though my parents rejoiced
when I went home from Niku, Arsmoe, or some other little provincial
town, with laurel-wreaths and gold pieces, to myself I always seemed
an impostor. Still, for my father's sake, I dared not give up my
profession, although I hated more and more the task of praising people
to the skies whom I neither loved nor respected, and of shedding tears
of pathos while all the time I was minded to laugh.

"I had plenty of time to myself, and as I did not lack courage and held
stoutly to our Greek confession, I was always to be found where there
was any stir or contention between the various sects. They generally
passed off with nothing worse than bruises and scratches, but now and
then swords were drawn. On one occasion thousands came forth to meet
thousands, and the Prefect called out the troops--all Greeks--to restore
order by force. A massacre ensued in which thousands were killed. I
could not describe it! Such scenes were not rare, and the fury and greed
of the mob were often directed against the Jews by the machinations of
the creatures of the archbishop and the government. The things I saw
there were so horrible, so shocking, that the tongue refuses to tell
them; but one poor Jewess, whose husband the wretches--our fellow
Christians--killed, and then pillaged the house, I have never forgotten!
A soldier drag