reparations to ensure
his comfort, at length seated himself beside the bed, his features
beamed with all their wonted gentleness and kindness.

"I'm charmed at what Harcourt has been telling me, Upton," said
Glencore; "and that you really can exist in all the savagery of this
wild spot."

"I'm in ecstasy with the place, Glencore. My memory cannot recall the
same sensations of health and vigor I have experienced since I came
here. Your cook is first-rate; your fare is exquisite; the quiet is
a positive blessing; and that queer creature, your doctor, is a very
remarkable genius."

"So he is," said Glencore, gravely.

"One of those men of original mould who leave cultivation leagues
behind, and arrive at truth by a bound."

"He certainly treated me with considerable skill."

"I'm satisfied of it; his conversation is replete with shrewd and
intelligent observation, and he seems to have studied his art more like
a philosopher than a mere physician of the schools. And depend upon it,
Glencore, the curative art must mainly depend upon the secret instinct
which divines the malady, less by the rigid rules of acquired skill than
by that prerogative of genius, which, however exerted, arrives at its
goal at once. Our conversation had scarcely lasted a quarter of an hour,
when he revealed to me the exact seat of all my sufferings, and the
most perfect picture of my temperament. And then his suggestions as to
treatment were all so reasonable, so well argued."

"A clever fellow, no doubt of it," said Glencore.

"But he is far more than that, Glencore. Cleverness is only a
manufacturing quality,--that man supplies the raw article also. It has
often struck me as very singular that such heads are not found in _our_
class,--they belong to another order altogether. It is possible that the
stimulus of necessity engenders the greatest of all efforts, calling
to the operations of the mind the continued strain for contrivance; and
thus do we find the most remarkable men are those, every step of whose
knowledge has been gained with a struggle."

"I suspect you are right," said Glencore, "and that our old system of
school education, wherein all was rough, rugged, and difficult, turned
out better men than the present-day habit of everything-made-easy and
everybody-made-any-thing. Flippancy is the characteristic of our age,
and we owe it to our teaching."

"By the way, what do you mean to do with Charley?" said Upton. "Do you
intend h