ass for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. When they had finished
this the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything he
would especially like them to sing.

"No," said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle in
his eye, "I had thought of asking you to sing the Rocky Mountains, but
as the mountains are so high, and the amount of time I have so limited,
I have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much."

"Oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning to
his class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile: "Now, ladies and
gentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder to
sing of _'igh_ mountings than it is to sing of _low_ mountings," and
forthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalization
there was no difference at all.

Only those, however, who knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him
well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen,
unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that
could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really,
in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch
and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his
interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions,
according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of
any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every
delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in
order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my
father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the
end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging
remark, and I bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said,
'Doctor Gridley, the disease is under control, I think. I can hear the
respiration to the bottom of the lungs.'

"'Yes, yes,' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication which
could by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. The failure
is in the recuperative energy. Vitality runs too low.' It meant from the
first, 'Your father will not live.'"

In the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sent
to him to ask what of the child--better or worse. His answer was: "He is
passing as free from pain as ever I knew a case of this kind."

In yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives i