the true physician who can refresh the patient by his presence. This quality radiates from nearly all of Dr. Mitchell's work. It has been said that there is a clinic in every one of his novels. Not only each character in these clinics, but each reader also, feels the quickening physician quality of the author.

Such an experience is rarely met with in reading a book, for doctors are such an overtaxed race that, even if they had the rare capacity, it is seldom that they have the mere physical endurance left after office hours to stamp on the record of creative art their own peculiar professional charm. This charm is a very constant attribute of their calling. It seems to be developed in all doctors worthy of the name by the constant call on their tolerance, sympathy, and self-control, and by their hourly contact with the whole gamut of character and tragedy.

Now, one of the most distinctive characteristics of Dr. Mitchell's writing is that it has this quality of charm in the high degree natural to the work of a man who is in the front rank both of medicine and literature. "I have one dying man to see," says the doctor in "Constance Trescot," "and there is another soul about to fill up the ranks. You see, I live on the skirmish-line of life." It is, perhaps, because Dr. Mitchell fought so long on the skirmish-line of life before beginning to tell us of the struggle that his pages are so full of the doctor's magnetism. What other physician, Dr. Holmes excepted, has ever taken such a place in our literature? As novelist and poet, indeed, our contemporary can, I think, more than hold his own with the elder physician; for "Hugh Wynne" surpasses "Elsie Venner" by as much as the "Ode on a Lycian Tomb" surpasses "The Chambered Nautilus."

It is true that as a poet we have strangely overvalued the older doctor and as strangely undervalued the younger; for it is exactly in this most difficult depart

ment of literature that the latter has best justified the range of his versatility. Dr. Mitchell the poet is not yet widely recognized, but as a poet he will be remembered long after it has been forgotten that he wrote our best historical novel. His prose won swift recognition; his poetry is still known only to the few. For this the labeling vice has been partly responsible, and partly the small interest shown in poetry during the last few decads.

With the present revival of poetic interest, however, there is still a chance that as a poet he may win during his lifetime the serious consideration that he deserves. Even now such lyrics as "To a Magnolia Flower," the glowing sonnet on the Pisan cathedral, and the songs "Good Night" and "Evening," are multiplying their admirers. As for Dr. Mitchell's supreme effort in verse, critics like Charles Eliot Norton and Thomas Bailey Aldrich agreed at the time of its publication that the "Ode on a Lycian Tomb" was one of the four or five great elegiac poems in English. This ode may yet take years to win its way to humanity's heart; but once there, it will remain.

The eminence, then, of his work as physician, discoverer in science and medicine, citizen, man of affairs, novelist, short-story writer, and poet makes Dr. Mitchell a powerful and much-needed champion of versatility. Because of his championship. we shall in the future be more wary how we blindly punish a cobbler of many lasts for not sticking to one of them. In various other ways also this well-poised, manyminded personality has blessed his times. Some day it may be truly said of him, as Arnold said of an elder poet, that he was

one

whose even-balanced soul, From first youth tested up to extreme old

age,

Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;

Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.

SLOWLY, very slowly, he laid down the photograph, but not to get rid of it. His eyes still rested on it where it lay.

"It stands to reason-it must be there, or they could n't have photographed it. Nothing but a photograph would prove it." The words broke suddenly from his lips while his eyes pursued their contemplation.

"I saw a picture once-a faint speck of a lamasery perched on the very top of a Himalayan spur. That gave me a little the same feeling. But that was only an illustration for a story in a magazine; it was stunning, but wholly imagined. There was an eagle, out of all proportion, in the middle distance. This-oh, this is the real thing! I'd give my last drop of blood, I'd traffic with Mephistopheles, to see this at sunset, or once, just once, for one little half-hour, under the full moon. I would; I swear I would!"

Targett clenched his fist and was silent. He had not taken his eyes from the photograph. He reached mechanically for his pipe, touched it, then relinquished it, prolonging his stare.

The lamplight fell on the ruined city and its peak-a peak as incredible as Teneriffe. It fell on sheer precipices and audacious ridges; on terraces that skirted cunningly escarpments where there could never have been more than foothold above the abyss; on insolent rocks crowned with machicolations as old as time; on distant mountains carelessly shouldering their way twenty thousand feet into the inane. It reiterated, with each spot it touched, the mystery: a monolithic city on an impregnable peak, girdled by a natural moat a mile deep; temples, fountains, stairways, dwellings, signal-towers, and gardens-all the paraphernalia of life elaborated just beneath the clouds.

"Not a scrap of writing; petroglyphs of the rudest; only that magnificent masonry left to hint the tale." There was something mournful in Targett's voice.

Targett had the habit of talking aloud to himself in his own rooms. In the first place, there were seldom in his wing any servants about to overhear him; in the second, his own voice, addressing no one, was as nearly mitigating a sound as he heard. in the course of the often immitigable day. He was at heart a companionable creature; he liked vocal agreement with his mood, even if it had to come from his own lips. Agreement with his mood seldom came from Evelyn. He fancied she thought him a poor stick. From her point of view, a poor stick he was almost bound to be. Therefore he had always given in to Evelyn. Her contempt had been made manifest on the honeymoon itself, and in the years that followed he had gone on renouncing. The house, the guests, the budget, the régime had all been Evelyn's. Wives were often dominant in happy marriages, ―he understood that,—and the ease with which he had put his own head under the yoke proved that he had no theoretical objection to being ruled. But Evelyn's despotism had shown itself less and less benevolent, and in the end he had begun to plan shyly a campaign of his own. The worm had turned in secrecy and silence, feigning all the while the most disarming. humility. After the death of their elder child, the boy, Targett had become a subtle schemer for freedom. His campaign was feminine in its aspect, if masculine in patient endurance. While he plotted, his attitude of bored pliancy took on a perfection of finish that sometimes almost deceived himself. No wonder that Evelyn in her more affectionate moods called him. "Barkis."

"Basil is deep, you know, very deep," Evelyn used to say, with a laugh that made his alleged profundity entirely a matter of her own cleverness. And the people who continued to like, or had begun to adore, her shimmering smartness, her intelligence, which was lavished wholly on details, roared over her old wines and

modern entrées with a private conviction that there was a woman! If Basil was deep, it must be with a blank, fathomless depth inimical to life, a cold calcareous ooze where even starfish could not thrive. Very few of their acquaintance chose Basil. Warner Levison chose him,-had chosen him for all time, before Evelyn swung into their common knowledge,but Warner hardly counted in the set Evelyn drew about her. Warner Levison had never commented on Evelyn since her marriage to Basil. Before the engagement he had once said:

"I don't care how ripping her ancestry is; she 's not a lady."

"No, but she is a gentleman," Basil had answered.

gett's impressive frivolity. Her little French heels had often seemed to beat out the very rhythm to which his life was forced tempestuously to waste itself. At first he was annoyed. He had not intended to tell her for a day or two yet; but it would be impossible to have an intimate talk with her and not make the great disclosure. Could he put it off, savor a little longer the perfection of his plot, the secret prospect of his freedom? Even as he heard the approaching footsteps, he began to debate, to vacillate. And then she was in the room, and all other problems were set aside, as always, by the problem of facing her immediate presence without diminished vitality.

"What's up, Evelyn?" There had

"That's something, when you consider the feminine creatures we have to choose among." Basil had been bland; Evelyn Myres amused him immensely.

Basil had remembered the conversation every day for many years-remembered it while he schemed for freedom in his lonely, lamplighted hours. He did not now know whether Evelyn was a good sport or not; he knew only that, if she was, a good sport was the last type on earth to make him happy, the last type to which he himself could ever afford satisfaction. Probably she was a good sport; she used the term constantly as a form of praise; she had once or twice even used it about the bishop. Evelyn was "High," and clattered to confession monthly. Perhaps the truest way to express their common attitude is to say that each considered the other a completely futile creature, and in nervous moments loathed the spectacle of that alien futility. Evelyn still amused Basil, but he cared less and less about being amused. On the other hand, Evelyn trusted Basil, but she more and more realized that the days when it is supremely important to trust some one are very few. For daily use and wont she would have preferred a nice taste in cocktails.

Evelyn Targett fidgeted about the table, procuring herself a cigarette and lighting it. She rejected three different boxes before she chose one; but Basil did not suspect her of nervousness. Evelyn always dramatized the little gestures of life. Choosing a cigarette was the kind of thing she put her mind on.

"Nothing much.”

She leaned back against the table, the fingers of her left hand drumming lightly on the surface. Then she turned for another match, and caught sight of the mounted photograph.

"What 's this? You never showed it to me. Oh, pretty stunning, is n't it?” She held it at arm's-length.

"Yes. Would you care for it?" He took some private comfort from the ironic question.

"No, thanks. My room is pretty well cluttered now with those objects Pierrot Pratt fetched home from Japan. I'm thinking of doing it over with grass-cloth and a carved table six inches high for the tea ceremony. It would be so good for all our manners. And I could have Shinuchi down to give me lessons in doing the flowers. I shall have to have something for Lent, you know, and the Japanese thing is rather ascetic in its own way."

"Is n't the Japanese thing rather played

out?"

"Oh, cheap Japanese, yes; but those ivories of Pierrot's are extremely good,