welcome as it was rare. Before my
eyes, too, his disposition seemed to unfold another phase; to pass to a fresh
day: to rise in new and nobler dawn.
    His mother possessed a good development of benevolence, but he owned a
better and larger. I found, on accompanying him to the Basse-Ville - the poor
and crowded quarter of the city - that his errands there were as much those of
the philanthropist as the physician. I understood presently that - cheerfully,
habitually, and in single-minded unconsciousness of any special merit
distinguishing his deeds - he was achieving, amongst a very wretched population,
a world of active good. The lower orders liked him well; his poor patients in
the hospitals welcomed him with a sort of enthusiasm.
    But stop - I must not, from the faithful narrator, degenerate into the
partial eulogist. Well, full well, do I know that Dr. John was not perfect, any
more than I am perfect. Human fallibility leavened him throughout: there was no
hour, and scarcely a moment of the times I spent with him, that in act, or
speech, or look, he did not betray something that was not of a god. A god could
not have the cruel vanity of Dr. John, nor his sometime levity. No immortal
could have resembled him in his occasional temporary oblivion of all but the
present - in his passing passion for that present; shown not coarsely, by
devoting it to material indulgence, but selfishly, by extracting from it
whatever it could yield of nutriment to his masculine self-love: his delight was
to feed that ravenous sentiment, without thought of the price of provender, or
care for the cost of keeping it sleek and high-pampered.
    The reader is requested to note a seeming contradiction in the two views
which have been given of Graham Bretton - the public and private - the out-door
and the in-door view. In the first, the public, he is shown oblivious of self;
as modest in the display of his energies, as earnest in their exercise. In the
second, the fireside picture, there is expressed consciousness of what he has
and what he is; pleasure in homage, some recklessness in exciting, some vanity
in receiving the same. Both portraits are correct.
    It was hardly possible to oblige Dr. John quietly and in secret. When you
thought that the fabrication of some trifle dedicated to his use had been
achieved unnoticed, and that, like other men, he would use it when placed ready
for his use, and never ask