S GLASS-CASES. 



autumn-evening her physician makes a later visit 

 than usual the room is faint from the exhalations 

 of the flowers the patient is not so well to-day he 

 wonders that he never noticed that mignionette and 

 those geraniums before, or he never should have 

 allowed them to remain so long some weighty words 

 on oxygen and hydrogen are spoken her poor pets 

 are banished for ever at the word of the man of 

 science, and the most innocent and unfailing of her 

 little interests is at an end. By the next morning 

 the flowers are gone, but the patient is no better ; 

 there is less cheerfulness than usual ; there is a list-- 

 less wandering of the eyes after something that is 

 not there ;* and the good doctor is too much of a 

 philosopher not to know how the working of the 

 mind will act upon the body, and too much of a 

 Christian not to prevent the rising evil if he can ; he 

 hears with a smile her expression of regret for her 

 long-cherished favourites, but he says not a word. 

 In the evening a largish box arrives directed to the 

 fair patient, and superscribed, " Keep this side up- 

 wards with care." There is more than the common 

 interest of box-opening in the sick chamber. After 

 a little tender hammering and tiresome knot-loosen- 

 ing, Thompson has removed the lid; and there lies 

 a large oval bell-glass fixed down to a stand of ebony, 

 some moist sand at the bottom, and here and there 

 over the whole surface some tiny ferns are just push- 

 ing their curious little fronds into life, and already 



v 5' iv 

 ei Traa' ety>/>o5iVa. JEscii. Again. 408. 



