ok as melancholy as Werter redivivus!"

"I--I ought not to be melancholy, I suppose; for I was thinking of
home."

Dalrymple's face and voice softened immediately.

"Poor boy!" he said, throwing away the end of his cigar, "yours is not a
bright home, I fear. You told me, I think, that you had lost
your mother?"

"From infancy."

"And you have no sisters?"

"None. I am an only child."

"Your father, however, is living?"

"Yes, my father lives. He is a rough-tempered, eccentric man;
misanthropic, but clever; kind enough, and generous enough, in his own
strange way. Still--"

"Still what?"

--"I dread the life that lies before me! I dread the life without
society, without ambition, without change--the dull house--the bounded
sphere of action--the bondage.... But of what use is it to trouble you
with these things?"

"This use, that it does you good to tell, and me to listen. Sympathy,
like mercy, blesseth him that gives and him that takes; and if I cannot
actually help you, I am, at all events, thankful to be taken out of
myself. Go on--tell me more of your prospects. Have you no acquaintance
at Saxonholme whose society will make the place pleasant to you? No
boyish friends? No pretty cousins? No first-loves, from amongst whom to
choose a wife in time to come?"

I shook my head sadly.

"Did I not tell you that my father was a misanthrope? He visits no one,
unless professionally. We have no friends and no relations."

"Humph! that's awkward. However, it leaves you free to choose your own
friends, when you go back. A medical man need never be without a
visiting connection. His very profession puts a thousand opportunities
in his way."

"That is true; but--"

"But what?"

"I am not fond of the profession. I have never liked it. I would give
much to relinquish it altogether."

Dalrymple gave utterance to a prolonged and very dismal whistle.

"This," said he gravely, "is the most serious part of the business. To
live in a dull place is bad enough--to live with dull people is bad
enough; but to have one's thoughts perpetually occupied with an
uncongenial subject, and one's energies devoted to an uncongenial
pursuit, is just misery, and nothing short of it! In fact 'tis a moral
injustice, and one that no man should be required to endure."

"Yet I must endure it."

"Why?"

"Because it is too late to do otherwise."

"It is never too late to repair an evil, or an error."

"Unless the repairing of it