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Paris, but that the opportunity of seeing all that was remarkable in three thousand deliveries in that space of time could be met with nowhere else in the world; that it equalled the whole practice of most physicians, and he was persuaded that I should regret it if I did not remain. He parted saying he would talk the matter over again with me. If it be pure interest that makes him urge this, I am glad; but it seems to me now an impossible endurance.

October 4.—Another midnight scene—a strange spectacle of suffering and of science. As I stood on the crowded benches of the amphitheatre I heard the clock strike one, the holy noon of night. I wondered how long our sins would thus be fearfully visited upon us. The rain beat in torrents on the skylight, the wind shook the building, and I could look with intense interest on that rare and dangerous accident submitted to our investigation—lithotomy, the only way to save life; a tedious operation lasting, I should think, an hour, for in the hurry of midnight dressing I had forgotten my watch

To-night I have been walking in the wood; the wind blows fresh under the clear starlight. I am happier now that my mind is clearly determined to leave at the end of six months, with the conviction that my work here is thoroughly done

October 30.—Madame Charrier sent for me this afternoon to present me with my portrait. It was a lithograph picture of Elizabeth Blackwell, taken from a history of sages-femmes célèbres. This lady, about 1737, published a work on medical botany in two large folio volumes, in order to get her husband, a medical man, out of prison, where he was confined for debt.

I imagined a whole romance out of the picture, and a little biography—a romance of a beautiful, true spirit,