AN OLD PHYSICIAN'S STORY.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 17, Issue 17, 12 October 1894, Page 7

AN OLD PHYSICIAN'S STORY.

An old doctor in his reminiscences of his professional life sometimes sketched to his friends the histories of long-dead, nameless patients, with a forca which made his statements as significant and powerful as auy aermou. One day, an acquaintance, a stranger in the village, who with the doctor had just witnessed a wedding in the church, said as they came out : ' Surely there is nol eign on earth so beautiful and hopeful as a marriage for love.' The dootor was silent a moment. ' Not always ,' he said. «We physicians not infrequently have the second sight. Sometimes we see iron fettera under the flower 8, and a death's head beneath the veil. Let me explain a little. 'Thirty years ago I saw a young couple walking out of this churchyard together. They were still boy and girl. It was the first time they bad met, but I noticed the eager admiration in his eye s, and the sby pleasure in her blushing face. I had known the lad from his intancy, and he was very dear to me. After he had walked with her to her door, he joined me. His breath came quickly. ' " That is the most beautiful creature I ever Baw !" he said. " She is well named Rose." * " She is not a rose for you to gather, Harry," I said. I was very candid. In his family dypsomania was hereditary, and in hers for three generations there had been cases of melancholia. "It would be a crime for you to marry that woman under these circumstances." 1 v Love laughs at laws, even when dcctors make them," he retorted, hotly. 1 ** There is no love in the case a* yet," I said. "There is nothing but a passing admiration. Keep out of her way. I do not say that love should always j yield to reasoD. But a transient fancy can and ought.'- 1 'I had done my duty. I never broached the subject to him again. He sought her constantly and ardently, and although his family and hers knew the facts, he married her.' ' What was the end of it V asked tbe stranger. ' 1 here are the graves of two of their children,' point ; ng to the little hillocks not far away. ' The babes were born diseased, and suffered much in their short lives. Tbe father aod mother have one son, an idiot, still living. Kose is in a private Insane asylum, and Harry's troubles drove him down the same road that so many of his family had trod. If he had remaiued single it is possible be might have been saved.' 'Bub then tbey would not kave married V llt is not always necessary to marry to live a noble, happy life,' said the old doctor, *mmmmKm+mmnammmmuammamm*mm~*mamm^mMmmm*t^mm