ailment or a domestic habit, from drinking wine to eating turnips, which
some crank who has obtained the ear of a politician does not control or
threaten in the immediate future to control."

"As for doctors!" he began, his voice cracking with indignation, "their
abominable...." but here the old gentleman fell into so violent a fit of
coughing that he nearly turned black in the face, and when I
respectfully slapped him on the back, in the hopes of granting him
relief, he made matters worse by shaking himself at me with an energy
worthy of 1842. His nurse rushed in, clapped him upon his pillows, and
was prepared to vent her wrath upon me for having caused this paroxysm,
when the old man's exhaustion and laboured breathing captured all her
attention, and I had the opportunity to withdraw.




On Historical Evidence


The last book to be published upon the last Dauphin of France set me
thinking upon what seems to me the chief practical science in which
modern men should secure themselves. I mean the science of history--and
in this science almost all lies in the appreciation of evidence, for one
of the chief particular problems presented to the student of history at
the present moment is whether the Dauphin did or did not survive his
imprisonment in the Temple.

Let me first say why, to so many of us, the science of history and the
appreciation of the evidence upon which it depends is of the first