20 PROLEGOMENON. 



sation of the promises and blessings of this evangel, then, 

 became the great desideratum. To get a " Place" with its 

 "airs and waters" for the Sanitarium, or home of healing 

 for all suffering and infirmity, has long been an absorbing 

 effort, the tyrannous thought and constant fight for years, 

 the only aim and motive of action and existence. 



Devoured by this vast and overpowering enthusiasm, 

 caught up into the vortex of a celestial ardor, in this 

 chivalric pursuit of an ideal so transcendent, of an end 

 so apparently unattainable, it was inevitable that fearful 

 battles with the hard actual, with the material and gross, 

 with wicked and anarchic powers, in all the mournful and 

 wearisome details of the real in this vulgar work-a-day 

 world, even mingled with elements of the tragic and mar- 

 vellous, must come. In short, there must inevitably ar- 

 rive the bores and tortures inseparable from the unex- 

 pected adventures of a village Leech leaving his doctorial 

 puddle in search of benevolent and humane reformations 

 and healing-institutions; involving also quixotic money- 

 tilts with windmill issues, cowing of lions, blanketings, 

 &c., not forgetting frequent collapses towards annihilation. 

 It is a natural query, and has been often made: What 

 could tempt a doctor to leave a bailiwick in which he 

 enjoyed all a country practitioner could or should enjoy, or 

 wish, or deserve to possess upon earth, namely, common 

 comforts of life, occasionally some money, (every one knows 

 it was semi-occasionally !) very much more reputation and 

 professional ascendency than he deserved, all that a vil- 

 lage, indeed, could give to any one who wished to be an 

 honest worker in the ranks of the guild to which he be- 

 longed, and go a Mazeppa-ride through wastes of hungry 

 wolves and ravens, perhaps to eternal exile and ruin ? It 

 might relieve the inquirer slightly if he should reflect for a 

 moment upon the amount of tragic elements in the country 

 physician's life at best, including the whole detail of human 

 suffering to be seen, heard, and felt, with only the hope of 

 some fruits of reward in the shape of credits in heaven; 



