The shadow of a dream Author:William Dean Howells Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II ONE day seven or eight years later, when I was coming up from Lynn, where we had board for a few weeks' outing in August, I fell in with Dr. Wingate, the n... more »ervous specialist. We were members of the same dining club, and were supposed to meet every month; we really met once or twice during the winter, but then it was a great pleasure to me, and I tried always to get a place next him at table. I found in him, as I think one finds in most intelligent physicians, a sympathy for human suffering unclouded by sentiment, and a knowledge of human nature at once vast and accurate, which fascinated me far more than any forays of the imagination in that difficult region. Like physicians everywhere, he was less local in his feelings and interests than men of other professions; and I was able better to overcome with him that sense of being a foreigner, and in some sort onsufferance, which embarrassed me (quite needlessly, I dare say) with some of my commensals: lawyers, ministers, brokers, and politicians. I had a sort of affection for him ; I never saw him, with the sunny, simple-hearted, boyish smile he had, without feeling glad ; and it seemed to me that he liked me, too. His kindly presence must have gone a long way with his patients, whose fluttering sensibilities would hang upon his cheery strength as upon one of the main chances of life. We rather rushed together to shake hands, and each asked how the other happened to be there at that hour iu the morning. I explained my presence, and he said, as if it were some sort of coincidence : " You don't say so ! Why, I 've got a patient over at Swampscott, who says he knows you. A man named Faulkner." I repeated, "Faulkner?" In the course of travel and business I had met so many people that I forgave myself for not distinguishing them...« less