ce, cannot observe, cannot remember,
and so throw light on the fashion of the dawning of the external world on
the human consciousness. If only we could remember how things looked when
they were first imaged on the retinae; what we felt when first we became
conscious of the outer world; what the feeling was as faces of father and
mother grew out of the surrounding chaos and became familiar things,
greeted with a smile, lost with a cry; if only memory would not become a
mist when in later years we strive to throw our glances backward into the
darkness of our infancy, what lessons we might learn to help our
stumbling psychology, how many questions might be solved whose answers we
are groping for in vain.

II.

The next scene that stands out clearly against the background of the past
is that of my father's death-bed. The events which led to his death I
know from my dear mother. He had never lost his fondness for the
profession for which he had been trained, and having many medical
friends, he would now and then accompany them on their hospital rounds,
or share with them the labors of the dissecting room. It chanced that
during the dissection of the body of a person who had died of rapid
consumption, my father cut his finger against the edge of the
breast-bone. The cut did not heal easily, and the finger became swollen
and inflamed. "I would have that finger off, Wood, if I were you," said
one of the surgeons, a day or two afterwards, on seeing the state of the
wound. But the others laughed at the suggestion, and my father, at first
inclined to submit to the amputation, was persuaded to "leave Nature
alone".

About the middle of August, 1852, he got wet through, riding on the top
of an omnibus, and the wetting resulted in a severe cold, which "settled
on his chest". One of the most eminent doctors of the day, as able as he
was rough in manner, was called to see him. He examined him carefully,
sounded his lungs, and left the room followed by my mother. "Well?" she
asked, scarcely anxious as to the answer, save as it might worry her
husband to be kept idly at home. "You must keep up his spirits", was the
thoughtless answer. "He is in a galloping consumption; you will not have
him with you six weeks longer." The wife staggered back, and fell like a
stone on the floor. But love triumphed over agony, and half an hour later
she was again at her husband's side, never to leave it again for ten
minutes at a time, night or d