n some distinct rescue, or
in the fact that he has been able to stand by, with little interference,
and see the disease run its normal course. I once watched a famous
surgeon just after he had done a life-saving operation by dim
candle-light. He stood smiling as the child's breath came back, and kept
nodding his head with pleasant sense of his own competence. He was most
like a Newfoundland dog I once had the luck to see pull out a small
child from the water and on to a raft. When we came up, the dog was
wagging his tail and standing beside the child with sense of
self-approval in every hair. The man wagged his head; the dog wagged his
tail. Each liked well what he had done.

Thus it is that these half-hours by the convalescent's couch are full of
subtle flattery for the doctor, and are apt to evolve the social best of
him, as he notes the daily gain in strength and color, and listens, a
tranquil despot, to one's pleas for this freedom or that indulgence. He
turns over your books, suggests others, and, trained by a thousand such
interviews, is likely enough a man interesting on many sides.

You selfishly enjoy his visit, not suspecting that you, too, are
ignorantly helpful. He has been in sadder homes to-day, has been sorely
tried, has had to tell grim truths, is tired, mind and body. The visit
he makes you is for him a pleasant oasis: not all convalescents are
agreeable. He goes away refreshed.

Most doctors have their share, and more, of illness, and are not, as I
have seen stated, exempt from falling a prey to contagious maladies.
Indeed, our records sadly show that this is not the case. Perhaps there
is value for them and their future patients in the fact that they have
been in turn patient and doctor and have served in both camps. Like
other sick folks, the physician, as I know, looks forward, when ill, to
the "morning visits" quite as anxiously as do any of those who have at
times awaited his own coming.

That medical poet who has the joyous art of sending a ripple of mirth
across the faces of the Anglo-Saxon world recognizes this fact in a
cheerful poem, called "The Morning Visit," and to which I gladly refer
any of my readers who would like to know from the lips of Oliver Wendell
Holmes what manner of delightful patient he must have been. I can fancy
that he lost for his doctor many a pleasant hour.

It has seemed to me as if this wonderful remaking and regrowing of the
tissues might be likened to a swift c