than most of those who call themselves the
laboring classes,--as if none but those whose hands were hardened by the
use of farming or mechanical implements had any work to do. He had that
sagacity without which learning is a mere incumbrance, and he had also
a fair share of that learning without which sagacity is like a
traveller with a good horse, but who cannot read the directions on the
guideboards. He was not a man to be taken in by names. He well knew that
oftentimes very innocent-sounding words mean very grave disorders; that
all, degrees of disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the
same term; that "run down" may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from
which a week or a month of rest will completely restore the over-worked
patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that "seedy"
may signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's
over-indulgence, which calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of
coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it, at
the shortest notice, to the south of France. He knew too well that what
is spoken lightly of as a "nervous disturbance" may imply that the whole
machinery of life is in a deranged condition, and that every individual
organ would groan aloud if it had any other language than the terrible
inarticulate one of pain by which to communicate with the consciousness.

When, therefore, Dr. Butts heard the word antipatia he did not smile,
and say to himself that this was an idle whim, a foolish fancy, which
the young man had got into his head. Neither was he satisfied to
set down everything to the account of insanity, plausible as that
supposition might seem. He was prepared to believe in some exceptional,
perhaps anomalous, form of exaggerated sensibility, relating to what
class of objects he could not at present conjecture, but which was as
vital to the subject of it as the insulating arrangement to a piece
of electrical machinery. With this feeling he began to look into the
history of antipathies as recorded in all the books and journals on
which he could lay his hands.

------------------------------

The holder of the Portfolio asks leave to close it for a brief interval.
He wishes to say a few words to his readers, before offering them some
verses which have no connection with the narrative now in progress.

If one could have before him a set of photographs taken annually,
representing the same person as he or sh