to take one or other of us in his gig for a drive to some patient’s house, in the lovely neighborhood of Edinburgh.  I remember my poor dear mother’s dismay when, on my return home, I told her of these same drives.  She was always in a fever of apprehension about people’s falling in love with each other, and begged to know how old a man this delightful doctor, with whom Mrs. Harry allowed her own daughters and my mother’s daughters to go gigging, might be.  “Ah,” replied I, inexpressibly amused at the idea of Dr. Combe in the character of a gay gallant, “ever so old!” I had the real school-girl’s estimate of age, and honestly thought that dear Dr. Combe was quite an old man.  I believe he was considerably under forty.  But if he had been much younger, the fatal disease which had set its seal upon him, and of which he died—­after defending his life for an almost incredible space of time from its ultimate victory (which all his wisdom and virtue could but postpone)—­was so clearly written upon his thin, sallow face, deep-sunk eyes, and emaciated figure, and gave so serious and almost sad an expression to his countenance and manner, that one would as soon have thought of one’s grandfather as an unsafe companion for young girls.  I still possess a document, duly drawn up and engrossed in the form of a deed by his brother, embodying a promise which he made to me jestingly one day, that when he was dead he would not fail to let me know, if ever ghosts were permitted to revisit the earth, by appearing to me, binding himself by this contract that the vision should be unaccompanied by the smallest smell of sulphur or flash of blue flame, and that instead of the indecorous undress of a slovenly winding-sheet, he would wear his usual garments, and the familiar brown great-coat with which, to use his own expression, he “buttoned his bones together” in his life.  I remembered that laughing promise when, years after it was given, the news of his death reached me, and I thought how little dismay I should feel if it could indeed have been possible for me to see again, “in his image as he lived,” that kind and excellent friend.  On one of the occasions when Dr. Combe took me to visit one of his patients, we went to a quaint old house in the near neighborhood of Edinburgh.  If the Laird of Dumbiedike’s mansion had been still standing, it might have been that very house.  The person we went to visit was an old Mr. M——­, to whom he introduced me, and with whom he withdrew, I suppose for a professional consultation, leaving me in a strange, curious, old-fashioned apartment, full of old furniture, old books, and faded, tattered, old nondescript articles, whose purpose it was not easy to guess, but which must have been of some value, as they were all protected from the air and dust by glass covers.  When the gentlemen returned, Mr. M——­ gratified my curiosity by showing every one of them to me in detail, and informing me that they had all belonged to, or were in some way