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16, 1860.] what they fancied? And such and such a tone of voice; would it bear the wished interpretation? Thus does Love avenge himself on the unsatisfactory Past, and call out its essence.

Could Evan do less than adore her? She knew all, and she loved him! Since he was too shy to allude more than once to his letter, it was natural that he should not ask her how she came to know, and how much the “all” that she knew comprised. In his letter he had told all; the condition of his parents, and his own. Honestly, now, what with his dazzled state of mind, his deep inward happiness, and love’s endless delusions, he abstained from touching the subject further. Honestly, therefore, as far as a lover can be honest.

So they toyed, and then Rose, setting her fingers loose, whispered: “Are you ready?” And Evan nodded; and Rose, to make him think light of the matter in hand, laughed: “Pluck not quite up yet?”

“Quite, my Rose!” said Evan, and they walked to the house: not quite knowing what they were going to do.

On the steps they met Drummond with Mrs. Evremonde. Little imagining how heart and heart the two had grown, and that Evan would understand him, Drummond called to Rose playfully: “Time’s up.”

“Is it?” Rose answered, and to Mrs. Evremonde: “Give Drummond a walk. Poor Drummond is going silly.”

Evan looked into his eyes calmly as he passed.

“Where are you going, Rose?” said Mrs. Evremonde.

“Going to give my maid Polly a whipping for losing a letter she ought to have delivered to me last night,” said Rose, in a loud voice, looking at Drummond. “And then going to mama. Pleasure first—duty after. Isn’t that the proverb, Drummond?”

She kissed her fingers rather scornfully to her old friend.

Author:Maria Edgeworth opens one of her tales with a recipe of great length, for the cure of every sort of complaint, copied from a receipt-book of some beneficent great-grandmother: a recipe which serves as a good exponent of the quacking tendencies of women in days when the popular idea of medical science was less advanced than at present. The yellow old receipt-books of our grandmothers, written in ink now pale brown, in a stiff upright hand, abounding in bad spelling, are usually found to contain instructions for the composition of extraordinary medicines, intermixed with recipes for all sorts of good things, savoury and sweet; and while we laugh at the absurdities propounded with all the confidence of credulity, we are crossed by grave thoughts of the mischief done, and especially of the number of children sent out of the world, by the desperate practice which every gentlewoman formerly considered to be one of her first natural duties. When the evil began to be recognised, the remedy was found, not in giving knowledge to women, but in committing the charge of everybody’s health to men. This was a great benefit, but only a partial one. Women never have been, and never will be, debarred from practising medicine, openly or on the sly. It is so natural to them, and so irresistible while they live in families, and have the charge of the sick, that no remonstrance or ridicule has ever availed to put a stop to female quacking. The best informed and most rational physicians have always seen, and the most courageous of them have always said, from that day to this, that the only cure is in making physicians of some well-qualified women, who alone can convince their sex of the seriousness of medical practice, and the infinite mischief of meddling with the delicate organisation of the human frame, without all the knowledge that can be obtained of the structure and action of its various parts. The time has arrived for this reform to begin, as my sketch of the career of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell will show.

As might be expected, the preparation for the change began with the case of childbirth. Three generations back, children were usually brought into the world by midwives,—ignorant and prejudiced women generally, who treated their patients with the same amount of sense and skill shown by nurses who, in fever and small-pox cases, shut doors and windows, lighted great fires, and administered brandy and gin. When this had gone on long enough, the charge was delivered over to the surgeons, to the infinite disgust of their patients. Many of us have heard tell of the domestic resistance offered when the husbands dismissed the wise woman, and bespoke the surgeon; when the pain of mind of young mothers under the new system really endangered their lives; and when, after their recovery, they would run into a shop, or down an alley, rather than meet their doctor in the street. It was at this stage of the business that Dr. Spencer, a Bristol physician, contemporary with our grandfathers, brought up his daughter to the profession of an accoucheur. She obeyed, and I believe, practised for some time; but she had not courage to go through with an experiment which drew so much notice upon her; and she changed her occupation for that of educator, in which she won the respect and attachment of all who knew her. Soon after, the late Mrs. Hockley began to practise as an accoucheur, and a very considerable practice she had; but we do not hear of her having had any comrade or successor. As there are always women who choose to be attended by women, there are always surgeons who will sell a certain amount of instruction, while protesting against delivering over their art into female hands. In our large towns, some surgeon or another has a class of women of the lower ranks for a guinea course of lectures; and now and then a woman of higher education attends a lying-in hospital for practice; but the influence of the medical profession generally is, in this country, strongly put forth to prejudice and frighten society out of any serious consideration of a method for committing this natural woman’s work into woman’s charge.

In the case of children’s diseases, the existing