hem. She rather tended to depreciate her own gifts, in
comparison with those of her friend, Miss Lurida Vincent. The two agreed
all the better for differing as they did. The octave makes a perfect
chord, when shorter intervals jar more or less on the ear. Each admired
the other with a heartiness which if they had been less unlike, would
have been impossible.

It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other.
The Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her
friend. All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her
bodily exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought. She
would fling open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had
any message for her. Her teachers had compared her way of reading to the
taking of an instantaneous photograph. When she took up the first book
on Physiology which Dr. Butts handed her, it seemed to him that if she
only opened at any place, and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning
up, as a moist sponge absorbs water. "What can I do with such a creature
as this?" he said to himself. "There is only one way to deal with her,
treat her as one treats a silkworm: give it its mulberry leaf, and it
will spin its own cocoon. Give her the books, and she will spin her own
web of knowledge."

"Do you really think of studying medicine?" said Dr. Butts to her.

"I have n't made up my mind about that," she answered, "but I want to
know a little more about this terrible machinery of life and death we
are all tangled in. I know something about it, but not enough. I find
some very strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I want to be
able to silence them when they attempt to proselyte me to their whims
and fancies. Besides, I want to know everything."

"They tell me you do, already," said Dr. Butts.

"I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!"
exclaimed The Terror.

The doctor smiled. He knew what it meant. She had reached that stage of
education in which the vast domain of the unknown opens its illimitable
expanse before the eyes of the student. We never know the extent of
darkness until it is partially illuminated.

"You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the most
ignorant young lady that ever graduated there," said the doctor. "They
tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record since the
school was founded."

"What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish i