Though he was felt to be extremely thorough, he was not uncomfortably theoretic, and if he sometimes explained matters rather more minutely than might seem of use to the patient, he never went so far (like some practitioners one has heard of) as to trust to the explanation alone, but always left behind him an inscrutable prescription. Sloper’s reputation that his learning and his skill were very evenly balanced he was what you might call a scholarly doctor, and yet there was nothing abstract in his remedies-he always ordered you to take something. It belongs to the realm of the practical, which in the United States is a great recommendation and it is touched by the light of science-a merit appreciated in a community in which the love of knowledge has not always been accompanied by leisure and opportunity. In a country in which, to play a social part, you must either earn your income or make believe that you earn it, the healing art has appeared in a high degree to combine two recognised sources of credit. This profession in America has constantly been held in honour, and more successfully than elsewhere has put forward a claim to the epithet of liberal.

DURING a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States, has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical profession.

Washington square de henry james