nvigorate and tone up the patient's
system for the operation. One day in October, the young lady came to
pay me for some prescriptions, and asked if a few weeks' delay would
enhance the danger of the operation. I assured her it was important to
lose no time, and urged her to arrange matters so as to remove the
patient to the hospital as soon as possible, offering to procure her
admission. She showed great distress, and informed me that she hoped to
receive very soon a considerable sum of money, from some artistic
designs that she felt sure would secure the prize. A week later she
came again, and I gave her a prescription to allay her mother's
nervousness. Then, with much agitation, she told me that she was going
South by the night express, to seek assistance from her mother's
father, who was a man of wealth, but had disowned Mrs. Brentano on
account of her marriage. She asked for a written statement of the
patient's condition, and the absolute necessity of the operation. I
wrote it, and as she stood looking at the paper, she said:

"'Doctor do you believe in an Ahnung?' I said, 'A what?' She answered
slowly and solemnly: 'An Ahnung--a presentiment? I have a crushing
presentiment that trouble will come to me, if I leave mother; and yet
she entreats, commands me to go South. It is my duty to obey her, but
the errand is so humiliating I shrink, I dread it. I shall not be long
away, and meanwhile do please be so kind as to see her, and cheer her
up. If her father refuses to give me the one hundred dollars, I will
take her to the hospital when I return.' I walked to the door with her,
and her last words were: 'Doctor, I trust my mother to you; don't let
her suffer.' I have never seen her again, until I entered this room. I
visited Mrs. Brentano several times, but she grew worse very rapidly.
One night the ensuing week, my bell was rung at twelve o'clock, and a
woman gave me this note, which was written by the prisoner immediately
after her arrest, and which enclosed a second, addressed to her mother."

As he read aloud the concluding lines invoking the mother's prayers,
the doctor's voice trembled. He took off his spectacles, wiped them,
and resumed:

"I was shocked and distressed beyond expression, for I could no more
connect the idea of crime with that beautiful, noble souled girl, than
with my own sinless daughter; and I reproached myself then, and doubly
condemn myself now, that I did not lend her the money. All that w