tion on the floor, and my young patient quite dead; my wretched schoolmate, in a high state of frenzy from delirium tremens, the influence of the laudanum having passed off, was dancing alternately from one room to another, calling upon his dead wife to get up and give him drink, and threatening his brother-in-law for concealing the jug in which they were accustomed to keep their home supply of the maddening beverage. As I stood in the room where the body of my patient lay, watching him, his attention was suddenly arrested by the dead infant. Gazing fixedly at it for a moment, he seemed much amazed, and muttered, " And what's this? I never saw this before (it was indeed their first-born, and she had died in giving birth to it during his drunkenness of an entire week), where did she get this? Poor thing? she was a good girl, but so peevish, so fretful -so very fretful; I'm sure I couldn't get her everything she wanted." Then, evidently forgetting her death, which he had for a moment seemed to realize, he danced into the other room, where the corpse of my patient lay, and called out ""Liza, Eliza, get up and get our breakfast; 'tis time to go to the store. (They had both been clerks.) Why don't ye get up, ye lazy thing, and get breakfast ?" and then dancing back, and placing his hand over the face of his dead wife, he soon withdrew it, and looking at it, as it were amazed, he pressed his lips for a moment to hers, and instantly withdrawing them with a face expressive of the utmost terror, gazed fixedly upward, and with an awful and unearthly cry that pierced my very soul, he cried out, placing his hand on his breast, "Oh! oh! oh! hell-fire-firewater-water-water-she's dead, and I've killed her and him both! Hell-hell-fire-all is ready for me! I see the devils with their red-hot forks, legions of 'em. Therethere they are," pointing upward with dilated pupils and distended nostrils and lips ashy pale, "devils-devils-come to take us all to hell!" and again placing his hand on his

chest, he cried for water, and swore the fire was burning out his soul. My heart was sick at the awful scene, and availing myself of the neighbors' aid, who now came in numbers, we tied his hands and feet with handkerchiefs, and administered a formidable dose of brandy and laudanum as the readiest means of quieting him. In a couple of hours he slept, and leaving him under the care of a trusty man, I retired to my couch in my office, my usual resting-place when anticipating disturbance and desiring to spare my family a share of my troubles. My dreams were none of the pleasantest the reader may be sure, and I made an early visit to my poor patient, having sent home my poor dying friend the doctor, hoping and God knows with what heartfelt conviction of its humanity that our wretched patient might share a grave with his poor wife and her child and brother, for I knew him too well to hope for amendment. My wish was gratified; he expired but a few minutes before my entrance, at the moment of awaking, and calling his poor dead wife to get breakfast. His death was represented to have been so instantaneous, and his complaint of that pain that caused him. to make the horrid exclamation that his soul was burning, dwelt so forcibly on my mind, that I felt unwilling to give a certificate without an examination of the body. A postmortem revealed an immense ruptured sac of the arch of the great mother of all the blood-vessels, the aorta. He had died instantly of aneurism, the frequent unsuspected result of intemperance, goading the heart to violent overaction and too great distension of the blood-vessels. The poor wife had died of convulsions, consequent on a premature confinement, the result of over-exertion, brought on by attending her wretched husband. Potter's field opened its benevolent bosom for the entire family of the drunkardthe great trench received them all!

Oh! look not on the wine-cup; its crystal lip will lure you to its uncertain depth. If it sparkle in the ruddy light,

there is death in its illusive ray. Bright eyes and ruby lips may be reflected from it; the song and the dance, the whispered vow and the kiss of love may follow; but the curse of desperation, and the bloated or the haggard face will come; and the bloodless lips and the mild eyes of the one you swore to cherish and protect will look at you in the silent night, and even if they cast on you a forgiving ray, and you escape the comparatively merciful fate of my wretched. schoolmate, you can only put out the fire of conscience, that will burn in your very soul, by the same draught that brought all this misery upon you.

II.

PRECARIOUSNESS OF MEDICAL LIFE IN NEW YORK-A PROFESSIONAL MARTYR-THE CURSE OF AN IRISH PRACTICE-DEATH OF THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS WIDOW AND CHILD-PARENTAL LOVE-MERCANTILE AFFECTION-THE LOVE OF MONEY.

O human voice! thou magic mirror of the Memory!

Thou witch of Avon and of Calvary !

"WILL you come and see my mother, Doctor?" said a young girl, dressed in an humble garb, as I opened my door to the timid summons of the bell, very late on a cold January night; the tones were plaintive and tremulous, and led me to infer that the mother was very ill.

"Where does your mother live, my child ?" I asked, for I had already learned the sad lesson in humanity that the names of the poor are of no consequence. "Where does she live, and how long has she been ill ?" I had spent a hard day, and it was near twelve o'clock at night. I would willingly have taken a nap on my office couch.

The young girl looked up into my face as the hall lamp

illumined faintly a pale and haggard countenance; and as she timidly raised her eyes to mine from beneath a common straw bonnet, her voice became still more tremulous, and I saw tears fall upon her faded shawl. "She lives close by, sir, in Mulberry street, near where you have been attending the poor woman who was burned; she saw you go in there, and Dr. told her he could not cure her; so she thought she would like to see you, sir. She has been very ill for nearly a year, and I am afraid she will never get well."

The poor child addressed me with a degree of accuracy and tenderness I was entirely unused to in my wretched practice; it spoke of gentle nurture, and the heart prompted my reply. "I will go with you, my dear child, immediately; pray sit near the fire and warm yourself whilst I go into the kitchen for my boots." It was a night of sleet, and my servant had gone to his warm bed, whilst I was exhausted with care and toil, and this poor child was abroad and oppressed with grief and poverty. And yet we were only fulfilling the mandate of Christ to bear one another's burdens. Her poor little heart was swelling with sorrow, and seeing dimly her day of desolation approaching; whilst I, in bodily comfort at least, was but fulfilling the vow I had made to my Alma Mater, and gathering the heart's harvest of humanity, in place of the prosperity that would have blunted its perceptions of mercy and of truth. Almost ashamed as I wrapped the ample folds of my thick cloak about me, and the shivering girl pattered after me with her well-worn shoes, I walked on in silence; the poor child's plaintive and sweet voice was yet falling on my ear-"I am afraid she will never get well." was, memory recalled one far sweeter, though its actual notes had long ceased to make music for me; yet it still comes to me from the spirit's hoard in my weary rounds amongst the children of misery, and helps me to bear the toils of our thankless profession.

Sweet and plaintive as it

The faint rays of a candle issuing from a window in the second story of one of those wretched wooden buildings that run the entire length of an ordinary city lot, lighted us up a rickety stairway on the outside of the house, leading to each miserable upper tenement; a stately tenant-house with its unventilated rooms and foul and pestiferous smells, has now taken its place. Poor as it was, its cleanliness was under the control of its own occupants, from the fact of its isolation from the loathsome Irish neighbors, whose superior means and brutal habits allowed them to occupy the lower and more accessible apartments, almost in common with the pigs which were fed from their very door-steps. As I reached the small platform in front of the door, I was obliged to stoop in order to enter the apartment, and its small size brought me almost to the bedside by a single step. The face of its occupant was turned from me as I entered, and it was not until a violent paroxysm of coughing had ceased to agitate her, that I could see the features of my patient. Quick as thought the little messenger had thrown. off her hat and shawl, and passing her thin little arm behind her mother, she raised her up so tenderly, and when the fit had ceased, she begged her to take a few drops of her anodyne with such melting earnestness-"Mother, dear mother, do take them; they will do you good; take them, dear mother, and you will be able to talk to the Doctor." As I turned for a moment towards the window, a sweet rose bush in full flower met my eye; it stood upon a board of faultless whiteness, shaded by a little muslin curtain of equal purity. These little evidences of refinement produced a melancholy effect upon me, which was not lessened when good breeding required me to address my patient.

I have always been accustomed to look upon the human face, as the last great struggle approaches, with almost a reverential feeling as one approaching a knowledge of that great secret-no less than the object of our creation