mpathy, what mortal should look
surprise? The constant, the pure, the alive through all generations, the
Alive Forever, will not. And the rest may apologize for overhearing a
story not intended for their ears.

It happened one evening that the surgeon and Miss Ames met outside the
hospital doors, near the old sea-wall. They were walking in no haste,
watching, it seemed, the flight of the brave little sea-birds, as they
made their way now above and now among the breakers. After the
heart-trying labors of the day, an hour like this was full of balm to
those who were now entered on its rest. But it was not secure from
invasion. Even now a voice was shouting to the surgeon, and he heard it,
though he walked on as if he were determined not to hear. He had taken
to himself this hour; he had earned it, he needed it; surely the world
could go on for one hour without him!

But the importunity of the call was not to be resisted. So, because the
irresistible must be met, the surgeon stood still and looked around. A
poor little fellow was making toward him with all speed.

"Mail for you, sir," he said, as he came nearer, and he gave a package
of newspapers, and one little letter, into the surgeon's hands.

So Miss Ames and he sat down on the stone wall to scan those newspapers,
and the surgeon opened his note.

Obviously a scrawl from some poor fellow who had obtained a discharge on
account of sickness, and gone home. It was not rare for the surgeon to
receive such missives from the men who had been under his charge.
Wonderful was the influence he gained over the majority of his patients.
Wonderful? No. The man of meanest talents, who gives himself body and
spirit to a noble work, can no more fail of his great reward, than the
seasons of their glory. Never man on this Landing thought meanly of the
hospital surgeon's skill, or questioned his right to rank among the
ablest of his tribe,--no man, and certainly not the woman who was making
a hero out of him, to her heart's great content.

While Miss Ames looked at the papers, he proceeded, without much
interest in the business, to open and read his note.

One glance down the blurred and blotted page served to arrest his
attention, in a way that letters could not always do. Here was not a cup
of cold water to sip and put aside. He glanced at Miss Ames. She was
absorbed in a report of "the situation," getting items of renown out of
one column and another, which should ease many an