right) with a clove-hitch. Surgeons are no sailors; and a knot which a cartman puts a hundred times a day over the front post of his cart, puzzles the juvenile professor exceedingly; and great is the honor bestowed on the fortunate achiever of the exploit. Phrenologists might find, in the retentive faculties of this knot, a desirable subject for investigation. The tighter you draw upon the two ends looped together, the more securely is the limb grasped; and a timber-head-hitch, as it is sometimes called, may be fixed to the tapering extremity of a slippery hacmetack log, and it will hold fast with the gripe of a drowning man, and allow you to drag it, for aught that can be averred to the contrary, half way round the globe. The mystery of this knot, unlike that of Gordian, is in the tying, not in the untying.

A broad belt was next passed along the os ischium, and up over the head, where it was fixed by a strong cord to the wall. Another was placed around the middle of the thigh. To the nooses in the end of the handkerchiefs, a small but strong pulley was attached, which was made fast at the other end to a staple on the side of the partition toward the patient's feet. In this situation, he seemed much as though stretched upon a rack, and waiting the application of the torture from his stern inquisitors; a resemblance which was more than justified in the progress of the operation.

The theatre was pretty well filled with students, and the arena of exhibition itself occupied by a sufficient number of persons either to assist, or to remain inactive spectators. The three chief surgeons stood about the feet of the patient, consulting as to the best mode of proceeding, and occasionally addressing a few words to the expecting patient. The walkers, house-surgeon, and one or two professional men, were arranged in convenient situations to afford aid. The nurse, par excellence, was also there, where his sailor-like promptness of hand in managing the rope was all important.

But as the reader does not, perhaps, know what a nurse is, hospitaliter et male loquendo, (that is, as applied to males, in hospital dialect,) it is proper that he should be made acquainted with him. I shall therefore peninsulate him briefly in this paragraph.

Nurse!—thy burly form would throw into inextricable confusion all ordinary notions of that soft and womanly occupation. To think of an advertisement like this: 'Wanted a wet-nurse, with a fresh breast of milk,' and of thy applying for it! Thy brachial extremities were far better adapted to embracing a cannon, than clasping an infant. Thou wert six feet three, leaving out the curve in thy shoulders, and wert called Featherbody, as if to show off thy unparalleled muscular development to better advantage. In fine, thy long chin, decisive mouth, nose of good magnitude, well-set eyes, rather superciliary eye-brows, low forehead, and matted hair, were sufficiently characteristic to have made thee remembered, had not thy extraordinary adaptation to thy office (so different from that which most conceive it to be) rendered thee an object of admiration to all who witnessed thy skill and prowess.

The patient thus extended upon the table, the bandages were taken from his arms; the bowl was held, and the flow of blood watched, to catch the first signs of failing strength. The vessel was already beginning to brim, when he sickened and vomited. It was now that the extension was put on. The sturdy, iron-armed nurse seized the stick around which the end of the pulley-rope was wound to give a firmer grasp to the hands, and began slowly and leisurely to bring the convolutions of the cord to a state of tension. His force, not trifling of itself, and now tripled, was not an eighth of it expended when its effects became apparent. The cord began to strain—the belt at the head tightened—the patient was lifted from the table, and became suspended between the two fastenings.

The surgeon, with his left hand upon the patient's ankle, and his right upon the upper end of the thigh-bone, while his knee, elevated by a stool, was placed under that of the culprit, as it hung over the end of the table, awaited the escape of the bone from its preternatural position. At the same time, a young Colossus stood upon the table, astride the unfortunate man, ready to lift up his thigh, and apparently tear it from his body, if it would not otherwise yield.

The man's groans now came thick and deep. He begged for a moment's intermission—rest, as he emphatically called it; and he never felt the full force of that word before, racked though his limbs had been, repeatedly, by the severest toil. The only consolation which they vouchsafed him, was in terms such as these:

'Do you feel sick—very sick?'

'Very.' His face was the picture of an emesis in embryo.

''Tis just what we want.'

The distressed man seemed to feel, gutturally, as if he could reject the comfort-drawing conclusion, ab imo pectore.

'Would you like to vomit?'

In the fulness of his stomach, he would have answered 'yes,' but restrained himself and his diaphragm after a moment's rumination.

'We don't want you to do that.'

'But I am exceedingly tired—wearied to death.'

'You will be better after it is over, my friend.'

'Give me a drink of water, doctor, for heaven's sake!'

'Take a little of this solution.'

'Do open the doors, and let in some air. I can hardly draw my breath.'

'Oh, never fear but you will breathe long enough.'

'I shall faint.'

'Faint away, and we shall soon have the bone in.'

'Doctor, I can't stand it!'

'Then lay it, friend,' a favorite expression with one of the distinguished surgeons who officiated on this occasion.

'Wont you loosen these straps, only for a moment, so that I can rest my leg?'

'One minute, my good man,' continued the speaker, while with double vigor he reiterated his efforts to pry the bone into its cavity; 'bear it a little longer—one minute—there—bear it only a little while longer——'

'O, doctor, you will break my thigh! Doctor—doctor!'

'Don't be alarmed, my man; if I do I will set it again.'

'Let me have that rope!' he exclaimed, as he made violent efforts to spring up and catch the cord that was straining his sinews; efforts ten times more hopeless and unavailing than those of Milton's giant,