Such at the time I now speak of were the views I held,--views certainly not original nor pleasing; but I cherished them with as fond a tenacity as if they had been consolatory truths of which I was the first discoverer.

I was intolerant to those who maintained opposite doctrines,--despised them as irrational, or disliked them as insincere.

Certainly if I had fulfilled the career which my ambition predicted,--become the founder of a new school in pathology, and summed up my theories in academical lectures,--I should have added another authority, however feeble, to the sects which circumscribe the interest of man to the life that has its close in his grave.
Possibly that which I have called my intellectual pride was more nourished than I should have been willing to grant by the self-reliance which an unusual degree of physical power is apt to bestow.

Nature had blessed me with the thews of an athlete.

Among the hardy youths of the Northern Athens I had been preeminently distinguished for feats of activity and strength.