This recent publication of the Rowfant Club presents a side of Dr. Cushing which all who knew him will appreciate. The volume is a small one, beautifully printed, made from a diary that he kept in 1900, when he was 31 years old and when he traveled abroad by way of a vacation after he had completed his surgical residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The diary makes pleasant reading. Even more attractive are the illustrations—mainly sketches with a few water colors—which he drew or painted, perhaps to make his diary more vivid or perhaps for his own entertainment. Too often, the inconsequential—many times the most charming—characteristics of leaders are lost because they are expressed so inadequately in biographies. This bit of Cushing, composed by himself, gives an intimate glimpse of his companionableness, his artistry, his alertness in observation, his humor and his ability to express himself originally in any