I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

Cholera I had, with severe complications and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got turned up St. I sat for awhile, frozen with horror and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it. I got down the book, and read all I came to read and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. “I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God.”

Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone. “The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us.

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