as good as fifty, and, to use
the saying of the doctor's friend, old Captain Finch: "Human nature is
the same the world over."

Through the long years of his solitary life, and his busy days as a
country practitioner, he had become less and less inclined to take
much part in what feeble efforts the rest of the townspeople made to
entertain themselves. He was more apt to loiter along the street,
stopping here and there to talk with his neighbors at their gates or
their front-yard gardening, and not infrequently asked some one who
stood in need of such friendliness to take a drive with him out into
the country. Nobody was grieved at remembering that he was a
repository of many secrets; he was a friend who could be trusted
always, though he was one who had been by no means slow to anger or
unwilling at times to administer rebuke.

One Sunday afternoon, late in November, while the first snow-storm of
the year was beginning, Dr. Leslie threw down a stout French medical
work of high renown as if it had failed to fulfil its mission of being
instructive first and interesting afterward. He rose from his chair
and stood looking at the insulted volume as if he had a mind to
apologize and try again, but kept his hands behind him after all. It
was thinly dressed in fluttering paper covers, and was so thick and so
lightly bound that it had a tendency to divide its material substance
into parts, like the seventhlies and eighthlies of an old-fashioned
sermon. "Those fellows must be in league with the book-binders over
here," grumbled the doctor. "I must send word to that man in New York
to have some sort of cover put on these things before they come down."
Then he lifted the book again and poised it on one hand, looking at
its irregular edges, and reflecting at length that it would be in much
better condition if he had not given it a careless crushing in the
corner of his carriage the day before. It had been sunshiny, pleasant
weather, and he had taken Nan for a long drive in the Saturday
half-holiday. He had decided, before starting, that she should manage
the reins and he would think over one or two matters and read a
while; it had been a great convenience lately that Nan understood the
responsibility of a horse and carriage. He was finding her a more and
more useful little companion. However, his studies and reflections had
been postponed until some other time, for Nan had been very eager to
talk about some of her lessons in whi