So I sit alone with my conscience,
In the place where the years increase,
And I try to remember the future

In the land where time shall cease;

And I know of the future judgment,
How dreadful soe'er it be,

That to sit alone with my conscience
Will be judgment enough for me.

XXXVIII.—THE GHOST OF A SENSATION.

IT has long been known to surgeons that, when a limb has been cut off, the sufferer does not lose the consciousness of its existence. This has been found to be true in nearly every such case. Only about five per cent of the men who have suffered amputation never have any feeling of the part as being still present. Of the rest, there are a few who in time come to forget the missing member, while the remainder seem to retain a sense of its existence so vivid as to be more definite and intrusive than is that of its truly living fellow-member.

A person in this condition is haunted, as it were, by a constant or inconstant fractional phantom of so much of himself as has been lopped away—an unseen ghost of the lost part, and sometimes a presence made sorely inconvenient by the fact that while but faintly felt at times, it is at others acutely called to his attention by the pains or irritations which it appears to suffer from a blow on the stump or a change in the weather.

There is something almost tragical, something ghastly, in the notion of these thousands of spirit limbs haunting as many good soldiers, and every now and then tormenting them with the disappointments which arise when, the memory being off guard for a moment, the keen sense of

the limb's presence betrays the man into some effort, the failure of which of a sudden reminds him of his loss.

Many persons feel the lost limb as existing the moment they awaken from the merciful stupor of the ether given to destroy the torments of the knife; others come slowly to this consciousness in days or weeks, and when the wound has healed; but as a rule, the more sound and serviceable the stump, especially if an artificial limb be worn, the more likely is the man to feel faintly the presence of his shorn member. Sometimes a blow on the stump will reawaken such consciousness, or, as happened in one case, a reamputation higher up the limb will summon it anew into seeming existence.

In many, the limb may be recalled to the man by irritating the nerves in its stump. Every doctor knows that when any part of a nerve is excited by a pinch, a tap, or by electricity-which is an altogether harmless means-the pain, if it be a nerve of feeling, is felt as if it were really caused in the part to which the nerve finally passes. A familiar illustration is met with when we hurt the " crazybone" behind the elbow. This crazy-bone is merely the ulnar nerve, which gives sensation to the third and fourth fingers, and in which latter parts we feel the numbing pain of a blow on the main nerve. If we were to divide this nerve below the elbow, the pain would still seem to be in the fingers, nor would it alter the case were the arm cut off. When, therefore, the current of a battery is turned upon the nerves of an arm stump, the irritation caused in the divided nerves is carried to the brain, and there referred at once to all the regions of the lost limb from which, when entire, these nerves brought those impressions of touch or pain which the brain converts into sensations. As the electric current disturbs the nerves, the limb is sometimes called back to sensory being with startling reality.

On one occasion the shoulder was thus electrized three inches above the point where the arm had been cut off.

For two years the man had ceased to be conscious of the limb. As the current passed, although ignorant of its possible effect, he started up, crying aloud, "Oh, the hand, the hand!" and tried to seize it with the living grasp of the sound fingers. No resurrection of the dead, no answer of a summoned spirit, could have been more startling. As the current was broken the lost part faded again, only to be recalled by the same means. This man had ceased to feel With others it is a presence never absent save in

his limb.

sleep.

-S. Wier Mitchell, M. D.

XXXIX.-WHAT THE OLD MAN SAID.

WELL, yes, sir; yes, sir, thankee,
So, so, for my time of life;

I'm pretty gray, and bent with pains
That cut my nerves like a knife.
The winters bear hard upon me,

The summers scorch me sore;

I'm sort o' weary with all the world,
And I'm only turned three-score.

My old father is ninety,

And as hearty as a buck;

You won't find many men of his age

So full of vigor and pluck;

He felled the first tree cut in the place,
And laid the first log down;

And living an honest, temperate life,
He's the head man of the town.

But, you see, when I was twenty or so,
I wanted to go to the city,

And I got with a wild set over there,
That were neither wise nor witty;

And so I laid the foundation, sir,
Of what you see to-day;

Old, little a-past the prime of life,
And a general wasting away.

'Taint a natural fever this, sir;
Its one no doctor can cure;
I was made to bear strong burdens,
Ox-like and slow, but sure,
And I only lived for my pleasures,
Though I was a Christian bred;

I lived for self, sir, and here's the end,
Crawling about half dead.

Well, well, 'twont do to think on't;

I try to forget my pain,

My poisoned blood, and my shattered nerves,

My wreck of body and brain;

Only I saw you drinking just now,

Drinking that devil's drain;

That's where I liked to have stepped into hell, And gone by the fastest train.

You don't like my blunt speech, mebbe;
Well, 'tis n't the nicest cut,

Only when a man's looked over the brink,
He knows what he's talking about;

And if, with his eyes wide open,

He's walked straight into the flame, And nothing less than the mercy of God Has turned his glory to shame,

Then when he says there's a drunkard's hell, You'd better believe it's true;

I've fought the devil hand to hand,

And tested him through and through;

We know, who've bartered body and soul,
What body and soul are worth;

And there's nothing like to a drunkard's woe
In all God's beautiful earth.

Wife, children! Haven't I had them? Yes,
No man has had sweeter than I;

But children and wife are dead and dust;
Why, what could they do but die?
Don't ask me to tell you of them, because
It blots out God's mercy even;

And it don't seem sure, though I've left my cups,
That my sin can be forgiven.

I tell you it's hard for a shattered hulk

To drift into harbor safe;

And I feel, sometimes, with my three-score years,
Like a hopeless, homeless waif;

But there's one thing certain: I've overcome!
And I'll fight while I draw a breath,
When I see a fine young fellow like you
Going down to the gates of death.

You'll laugh, perhaps, at an old man's zeal;
I laughed in a young man's glee;
But God forbid, if you reach three-score,
You should be a wreck like me.

-Alice Robbins.

XL. PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

THAT is, undoubtedly, the wisest and best system which takes the infant from the cradle and conducts him along through childhood and youth up to high maturity, in such a manner as to give strength to his arm, swiftness to his feet, solidity and amplitude to his muscles, symmetry to his frame, and expansion to his vital energies. It is obvious that this branch of education comprehends not only food and clothing, but air, exercise, lodging, early rising, and whatever else is requisite to the full development of the physical constitution. The diet must be simple, the apparel must not be warm, nor the bed too soft.

Let parents beware of too much restriction in the man