h
his, as he has a wonderful art in doing. I hope, when your turn comes,
you will be able to help the very man himself, as your father does."

"Do you want me to be a doctor of _your_ kind, Mr Shepherd?"

"No. It is a very wrong thing to take up that basket without being told
by Him who makes the medicine. If He wants a man to do so, He will let
him know--He will call him and tell him to do it. But everybody ought to
take the medicine, for everybody needs it; and the happy thing is,
that, as soon as anyone has found how good it is--food and wine and all
upholding things in one--he becomes both able and anxious to give it to
others. If you would help people as much as your father does, you must
begin by taking some of the real medicine yourself."

This conversation gave Willie a good deal to think about. And he had
much need to think about it, for soon after this he left his father's
house for the first time in his life, and went to a great town, to
receive there a little further preparation for college. The next year he
gained a scholarship, or, as they call it there, a _bursary_, and was at
once fully occupied with classics and mathematics, hoping, however, the
next year, to combine with them certain scientific studies bearing less
indirectly upon the duties of the medical man.

CHAPTER XX.

HOW WILLIE DID HIS BEST TO MAKE A BIRD OF AGNES.

During the time he was at college, he did often think of what Mr
Shepherd had said to him. When he was tempted to any self-indulgence,
the thought would always rise that this was not the way to become able
to help people, especially the real selves of them; and, when amongst
the medical students, he could not help thinking how much better doctors
some of them would make if they would but try the medicine of the other
basket for themselves. He thought this especially when he saw that they
cared nothing for their patients, neither had any desire to take a part
in the general business for the work's sake, but only wanted a practice
that they might make a living. For such are nearly as unfit to be
healers of the body, as mere professional clergymen to be healers of
broken hearts and wounded minds. To do a man good in any way, you must
sympathise with him--that is, know what he feels, and reflect the
feeling in your own mirror; and to be a good doctor, one must love to
heal; must honour the art of the physician and rejoice in it; must give
himself to it, that he may learn a