assistance, if he is ashamed or afraid to show his necessities and his
danger. I didna send for you to cure my body, but to examine my mind,
and tell me if it is sound and healthy, or weak and diseased, and
therefore I will conceal naething frae ye that may show you its state
and condition."

I was pleased to find I had so tractable a patient. I paused for a
moment, to consider in what way I should draw him out, and on what
side I should attack him--whether I should argue calmly with him, and
endeavour to stimulate his feelings of duty to his Maker, to himself
and his poor daughter; or shake him roughly as a vain and sinful
dreamer who had voluntarily swallowed a pernicious soporific, and try
to awaken him, and keep him awake, after the manner of our remedial
endeavours to save those who have attempted to poison themselves by
laudanum. I saw, in an instant, that he was by far too strong-minded a
man to be operated upon effectually by the mere charm of the imputed
reach and strength of our cabalistic lore--an agent, if well employed,
of great good in our profession--and too determined (for such
resolutions are always, in some degree, a false result of reasoning
powers) to be put from his purpose either by a firm pressure of
logical authority, or the subtle and more dangerous means of
good-humoured or severe satire. My course was clearly to endeavour to
affect the form of his own reasoning, and, if possible, to invest it
with a character which might be recognised as true by the peculiar,
and, no doubt, morbid perceptions he possessed of moral truth. I began
by securing his eye, which I saw was, at times, inclined to wander, or
take on that unmeaning, dull, glazed aspect which people in the act of
brooding over intense sorrows--as if the optic nerves were thereby
paralysed--so often exhibit.

"What train of mind are you in generally," said I, "when the wish to
die, accompanied with the fortitude you have mentioned, comes upon you
in its strongest form?"

"I first fall into a state of low spirits," said he, "and then nae
effort I can use will tak my mind aff my dead wife. I think for whole
hours--sometimes on the hills, sometimes in the house, and sometimes
in my bed--of our courtship, our marriage, our happy life, and her
miserable, painful, untimely death. This feeds my sorrow, which grows
stronger, and descends deeper and deeper, till it reaches my brain,
and I am sunk in the darkness o' despair. To escape frae thou