being engaged in carrying a dram to his lips.  His superb indifference gratified my artistic feeling more than it wounded my personal sensibilities.  Anything really superior in its line claims my homage, and this man was the ideal bartender, above all vulgar passions, untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of the liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all those lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any of the roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir is the cheap, all-powerful substitute.

Dr. Wilson was in bed, though it was early in the evening, not having slept for I don’t know how many nights.

“Take my card up to him, if you please.”  “This way, sir.”

A man who has not slept for a fortnight or so is not expected to be as affable, when attacked in his bed, as a French Princess of old time at her morning receptions.  Dr. Wilson turned toward me, as I entered, without effusion, but without rudeness.  His thick, dark moustache was chopped off square at the lower edge of the upper lip, which implied a decisive, if not a peremptory, style of character.

I am Dr. So-and-So of Hubtown, looking after my wounded son. (I gave my name and said Boston, of course, in reality.)

Dr. Wilson leaned on his elbow and looked up in my face, his features growing cordial.  Then he put out his hand, and good-humoredly excused his reception of me.  The day before, as he told me, he had dismissed from the service a medical man hailing from ******, Pennsylvania, bearing my last name, preceded by the same two initials; and he supposed, when my card came up, it was this individual who was disturbing his slumbers.  The coincidence was so unlikely a priori, unless some forlorn parent without antecedents had named, a child after me, that I could not help cross-questioning the Doctor, who assured me deliberately that the fact was just as he had said, even to the somewhat unusual initials.  Dr. Wilson very kindly furnished me all the information in his power, gave me directions for telegraphing to Chambersburg, and showed every disposition to serve me.

On returning to the Herr House, we found the mild, white-haired old gentleman in a very happy state.  He had just discovered his son, in a comfortable condition, at the United States Hotel.  He thought that he could probably give us some information which would prove interesting.  To the United States Hotel we repaired, then, in company with our kind-hearted old friend, who evidently wanted to see me as happy as himself.  He went up-stairs to his son’s chamber, and presently came down to conduct us there.