as I do now, from disgust at the nonsense I should have to write. It is endurable enough to witness; for one thing quickly dismisses another, and some relief occurs from the more amiable or intellectual qualities of the parties concerned: but I hate detail in writing; and I never do get through the whole list of particulars that I believe you would like to have. You must excuse me now, and take my word for it, in the large, that we are all pretty much what we were when you saw us three years ago, except of course, being three years older, and some few of us three years wiser. It will be a satisfaction to you also to know that my practice has made a very good growth for the time. You liked my last year’s report of it. It has increased more since that time than even during the preceding year; and I have no further anxiety about my worldly prospects. I am as well satisfied with my choice of an occupation in life as ever. Mine has its anxieties, and désagrémens, as others have: but I am convinced I could not have chosen better. You saw, when you were with me, something of the anxiety of responsibility; what it is, for instance, to await the one or the other event of a desperate case: and I could tell you a good deal that you do not and cannot know of the perils, and troubles attendant upon being the depository of so much domestic and personal confidence as my function imposes upon me the necessity of receiving. I sometimes long to be able to see nothing but what is apparent to all in society; to perceive what is ostensible, and to dream of nothing more,—not exactly like children, but like the members of large and happy families, who carry about with them the purity and peace of their homes, and therefore take cognisance of the pure and peaceful only whom they meet abroad; but it is childish, or indolent, or cowardly, to desire this. While there is private vice and wretchedness, and domestic misunderstanding, one would desire to know it, if one can do anything to cure or alleviate it. Dr Levitt and I have the same feeling about this; and I sometimes hope that we mutually prepare for and aid each other’s work. There is a bright side to our business, as I need not tell you. The mere exercise of our respective professions, the scientific as well as the moral interest of them, is as much to us as the theory of your business to you; and that is saying a