CORRESPONDENCE. 
153 
class, they call ns “ egotists,” seeking the association of these 
giants of earth who walk the mountain ranges of the world. 
When we prove they have licensed men that are demented they 
say that u dementia is much in evidence ,” whatever that silly 
phrase may mean, and insinuate a suspicion of our sanity. 
When we affirm the fact that we and others protested the un¬ 
fitness to practice of these applicants, the Board did not deny 
that fact, but sought to deceive the profession by publishing, as 
a letter of protest, what was, in reality, an expression of my 
utter disgust with the Board for its cringing , cowardly , and 
contemptible conduct, in dereliction of its plain and positive 
duty. Dr. Robertson knew, when he published that letter as a 
letter of protest from me, that he was deliberately trying to deceive 
the profession at my expense. This act of shameless duplicity, 
while not open, perhaps, to the charge of downright lying , is 
such a cunning, careless , contemptible , twisting and torturing of 
the truth , that, in courtesy to him , I will call his conduct cow¬ 
ardly prevarication. 
He has there on file two thoroughbred letters of vigorous 
protest from me, dated July 28th and Dec. 16th, 1899, which 
the Board will never publish. I think I have answered Dr. 
Robertson’s deliverances fully and fairly. He says he “shot, at 
random at our committee and hit the king bee of the hornets’ 
nest and hurt him badly.” In behalf of our committee I may 
say his assault was like bombarding a stone-wall with mush 
poultices. If our committee report was false it was calumny, 
and should have called out their cannon. But when we smote 
them on one side they turned the other, and when we apply the 
lash they offer no resistance, but simply lie down and seek to 
be funny. His defense of our arraignment, either as a literary 
or logical fulmination, is a complete, flat, and foolish failure. 
He purposely perverts certain parts and passages of my article, 
seeking in the absence of originality to steal his neighbor’s 
thunder in search of lightning. Doctor, when in battle never 
go over to the enemy to borrow ammunition. 
But, to be candid, I must confess the Doctor’s article, how¬ 
ever soft and senseless, is vastly better than I expected, for you 
know “ ex nihilo nihil fit ”—“ out of nothing, nothing can 
come.” The Doctor once expressed a haughty, imperious and 
blood-curdling contempt for the whole kit and clan of us poor 
plebeian non-graduates, but he says nozv he has the profoundest 
respect for most of them— except me. He pities me for allow¬ 
ing the lurid scintillations of my cerebrum to shatter the vase 
