t be allured back to that part of my
life alone worth living for--my profession!

"It was on a steamer between Marseilles and Genoa--We had left the
coast far behind us--suddenly the Captain came up in great
consternation, and asked if there was any doctor among the passengers.
A lady had been taken ill, and was lying in the cabin writhing with
pain--I was just lying down to sleep, determined not to meddle in this
matter, when I heard moans and exclamations from the cabin which would
not let me rest. I asked the Captain to take me down, and after
searching the ship's medicine chest; found some remedies which soothed
the pain. The lady would not let me go, but insisted in a strange medly
of Spanish, and French on my passing the night on a sofa in the
adjoining cabin. At last she went to sleep, and my eyes also closed,
weary with gazing through the open hatchway at the moon-lit sea.

"All at once, I felt something like an icy cold hand drawn across my
face. I started up, believing it to be the spray which was dashing off
the wheels into the cabin--but to my intense horror, I saw the figure
of Ellen standing beside me, just as she had looked when lying in her
coffin, only her dim widely opened eyes were fixed on me, and her white
finger was laid to her lips, as if to say: 'Do not betray me.' Then she
approached the couch of the stranger, lifted one of the green silk
curtains and after gazing for several minutes on the sleeping woman she
sadly shook her head, and looked gravely at me as if to reproach me for
caring for another when I had left _her_ to die. For one moment she
sunk down at the foot of the bed as if greatly exhausted: then
beckoning three times to me she glided through the hatchway like a
streak of mist. Since that night I have never again approached a
sick-bed. You know, Charles, that I was never of a visionary nature,
that I do not believe in spirits. Of course I know as well as you do
that this was only a delusion of the senses. An apparition caused by
the over excited state of my nerves. But does this alter the main point?
Did I suffer the less because I knew it to be owing to the power of my
nerves over my reason? How can one, whose senses are at variance with
him, hope to gain peace? and how is _he_ to live, who hopes no longer?

"I have become a superfluous guest at the banquet of life, and so I
prefer taking leave of it, and only press your hand once more before
disappearing. My existence is now no l