d to take other methods for prosecuting
his inquiries. He applied to the sufferer's family, to learn, if
possible, the source of that secret grief which was gnawing the heart
and sucking the life-blood of his unfortunate patient. The persons
applied to, after conversing together previously, denied all knowledge
of any cause for the burden which obviously affected their relative. So
far as they knew--and they thought they could hardly be deceived--his
worldly affairs were prosperous; no family loss had occurred which could
be followed with such persevering distress; no entanglements of
affection could be supposed to apply to his age, and no sensation of
severe remorse could be consistent with his character. The medical
gentleman had finally recourse to serious argument with the invalid
himself, and urged to him the folly of devoting himself to a lingering
and melancholy death, rather than tell the subject of affliction which
was thus wasting him. He specially pressed upon him the injury which he
was doing to his own character, by suffering it to be inferred that the
secret cause of his dejection and its consequences was something too
scandalous or flagitious to be made known, bequeathing in this manner to
his family a suspected and dishonoured name, and leaving a memory with
which might be associated the idea of guilt, which the criminal had died
without confessing. The patient, more moved by this species of appeal
than by any which had yet been urged, expressed his desire to speak out
frankly to Dr.----. Every one else was removed, and the door of the
sick-room made secure, when he began his confession in the following
manner:--

"You cannot, my dear friend, be more conscious than I, that I am in the
course of dying under the oppression of the fatal disease which consumes
my vital powers; but neither can you understand the nature of my
complaint, and manner in which it acts upon me, nor, if you did, I fear,
could your zeal and skill avail to rid me of it."--"It is possible,"
said the physician, "that my skill may not equal my wish of serving you;
yet medical science has many resources, of which those unacquainted with
its powers never can form an estimate. But until you plainly tell me
your symptoms of complaint, it is impossible for either of us to say
what may or may not be in my power, or within that of medicine."--"I may
answer you," replied the patient, "that my case is not a singular one,
since we read of it in th