that most delightful profession.

"But you surely don't mean to let her risk her happiness in following
that career?" Dr. Ferris inquired with feigned anxiety for his answer.
"You surely aren't going to sacrifice that innocent creature to a
theory! I know it's a theory; last time I was here, you could think of
nothing but hypnotism or else the action of belladonna in congestion
and inflammation of the brain;" and he left his very comfortable chair
suddenly, with a burst of laughter, and began to walk up and down the
room. "She has no relatives to protect her, and I consider it a
shocking case of a guardian's inhumanity. Grown up naturally indeed! I
don't doubt that you supplied her with Bell's 'Anatomy' for a
picture-book and made her say over the names of the eight little bones
of her wrist, instead of 'This little pig went to market.'"

"I only hope that you'll live to grow up yourself, Ferris," said his
entertainer, "you'll certainly be an ornament to your generation. What
a boy you are! I should think you would feel as old as Methuselah by
this time, after having rattled from one place to the next all these
years. Don't you begin to get tired?"

"No, I don't believe I do," replied Dr. Ferris, lending himself to
this new turn of the conversation, but not half satisfied with the
number of his jokes. "I used to be afraid I should, and so I tried to
see everything I could of the world before my enthusiasm began to
cool. And as for rattling to the next place, as you say, you show
yourself to be no traveler by nature, or you wouldn't speak so
slightingly. It is extremely dangerous to make long halts. I could cry
with homesickness at the thought of the towns I have spent more than a
month in; they are like the people one knows; if you see them once,