–––often with poverty and hope deferred
–––and then the final gradual triumph of
patient desert, and its reward, in distinction,
wealth, and the daily opportunities of lessening
human pain and saving valuable lives. This
happy climax charms all hearers. Each young
listener makes the case his own, and, as his
high-lows trample down the staircase when
the lecture is over, he is thinking of the day
when he is to step out of the hall of a sick
duchess into a yellow chariot, to be driven
round to a host of equally distinguished
patients.

At times, but not so often as they might be,
these opening medical addresses are enlivened
by anecdotic morsels of human experience.
One London lecturer who so enlivened his
instructions, used to gain the hearts of his
young hearers wholesale, especially when he
encouraged them by telling how he, now the great
hospital light, made blunders to begin with.
One day he was describing his first attendance
on a grand operation, at which a senior
surgeon seeing him stand by, said, ''Mr. ––––
see if you can feel the artery." "I put my
digit into the wound," confessed the future
great operator, "and so probed it, but the
examination gave me about as much information
as if I had put my finger into the Atlantic
to discover America."

But this great day for the doctors in all
places at the present time presents a great
contrast to things as they were, even in the
memory of those who are now active and
busy at such meetings; and as the change
illustrates the age we live in, it may well be
noticed.

Every living being–––every man, woman,
and child–––endures a certain ascertained
amount of sickness during life, for the alleviation
of which, medical knowledge and skill is
required. But medical efficiency in the treatment
of disease cannot be gained unless the
young doctor bases all his subsequent studies
upon a thorough knowledge of the structure
of the human body. This information can
only be had by the use of the scalpel upon the
dead. The very notion is apt to send a thrill
through every nerve of those unaccustomed to
regard the subject in a philosophical light.
But the terms are absolute: no dissection
no knowledge. For generations, such means
of information were forbidden to the student;
and being denied by law, and abhorrent to
popular feeling, the unlucky doctors had to
run all sorts of risks, and to resort to all
kinds of improper and disagreeable
expedients to procure the means of teaching the
art of the anatomist. Hence sprang up a
race of "resurrection men," as they were
called,–––men who stole the bodies of the dead,
to sell them to anatomical schools for dissection.
Their robberies of the grave were
carried on at great risks. The public
detestation of the crime was so great, that
when a clumsy or unlucky follower of it was
detected, he had to fight for his life, or
submit to be kicked and beaten, and trampled to
death.

But the first of October is no longer preceded
by the forays of the "resurrectionist;" no
longer clouded by the lack of means for
pursuing the branch of study on which the
superstructure of medical knowledge must be
raised. A population of two millions has
ever some members dropping from the ranks
solitary and unknown–––the waifs and strays
of society–––without friends to know or to
mourn their fate. Almost always paupers,
often criminals, though their lives may have
been useless, or worse, they seem to make, when
the fitful struggle is over, some atonement
after death. The wreck of their former selves
is offered at the shrine of science for a while,
and when thereafter they are gathered to the
kindred dust of the graveyard, they may sleep
none the less calmly for having contributed no
mean help to the advancement of that branch
of human knowledge which has its annual
ovation on the first of October–––the great day
for the doctors.

THE GHOST THAT APPEARED TO
          MRS. WHARTON.

WHEN my mother was a girl, some rumours
began to steal through the town where she
lived, about something having gone amiss
with old Mrs. Wharton: for, if Mrs. Wharton
was not known by all the townspeople, she was
known and respected by so many, that it was
really no trifle when she was seen to have the
contracted brow, and the pinched look about
the nose that people have when they are in
alarm, or living a life of deep anxiety. Nobody
could make out what was the matter. If
asked, she said she was well. Her sons were
understood to be perfectly respectable, and
sufficiently prosperous; and there could be no
doubt about the health, and the dutifulness, and
the cheerfulness, of the unmarried daughter
who lived with her. The old lady lived in a
house which was her own property; and her
income, though not large, was enough for
comfort. What could it be that made her
suddenly so silent and grave? Her daughter
was just the same as ever, except that she was
anxious about the change in her mother. It
was observed by one or two that the clergyman
had nothing to say, when the subject was
spoken of in his hearing. He rolled and
nodded his head, and he glanced at the ceiling,
and then stuck his chin deep into his shirt-frill:
but those were things that he was
always doing, and they might mean nothing.
When inquired of about his opinion of Mrs.
Wharton's looks and spirits, he shifted his
weight from one foot to the other, as he stood
before the fire with his hands behind him,
and said, with the sweet voice and winning
manner that charmed young and old, that, as
far as he knew, Mrs. Wharton's external
affairs were all right; and, as for peace of
mind, he knew of no one who more deserved