prize our Atlantic soundings, not doubting in the least that patience, continued observation, and experiment will yet bring to our knowledge hidden facts, new laws, and undreamed-of wisdom out of the depths.
PHYSIC: A FORTUNE.
occupy a large house at the corner of Clifton Street and Derby Place, one of the new and fashionable thoroughfares recently sprung up in this populous manufacturing town of Rexford. Before my front windows—handsome bow windows on either side of an elegant stone porch—three roads come to a point, and a triangular grass-plat, surrounded by iron railings, does its best to maintain the peace by its unbiassed equanimity. Each of these roads leads to long interminable rows of respectable houses. The inhabitants of these domiciles every morning and afternoon must pass and repass my door on their way to the great heart of the city. Thus, hundreds go by daily. Why, then, after five years’ residence at Wimpledown House, why, then, I say—in the name of all that is good—do I sit waiting from day to day, and from year to year, for the patients that never come?
You may say, Perhaps I am not steady, attentive, agreeable, well up in my profession, and a host of other things. Let me hasten to inform you that none of these objections are good against me.
I hold a London diploma of M.R.C.S., and am a graduate of a university. I could at this moment, with the cobwebs of years upon my memory, give you the nine pairs of cranial nerves in their order from before, backward, with their four groups and their divisions, sub-divisions, and ramifications.
Last summer I took off Mrs. Crofts’ left breast for cancer, and she still lives, one of my staunch supporters. Mr. Battersby had sustained a bad compound comminuted fracture of the leg. He protests that he was saved from death by my instrumentality. Miss Murchison, in a case of tubercular bone, was reinstated (she would tell you) by the blessing of God through my skill and ability.
But Mrs. Crofts won’t always be having operations for my benefit; Mr. Battersby can’t be expected to be run over continually; Miss Murchison has had enough of it: and I ask, with these successful cases all staring people in the face, why do I sit waiting with aching heart for the patients that never come?
Right opposite to me, at the end of the Steemson Road, lives my friend Barlington. He is one of the chief surgeons to the Rexford Infirmary. He has a stirring and an active practice, and drives pleasantly in his close carriage and pair of prancing bays. He sits forward as he drives, and reads diligently, holding his book so that passers-by may see it. People say: “Barlington must make the most of his time. Every spare minute he devotes to study. He’s a remarkable man, that Barlington!” Sometimes, when his eye is wandering through the window, he bows very low to me as I drive past in my cab. For I am supposed to hold in my power occasional consultations, and Barlington has always his eye to the main chance. He is a little, shrewd man, with an excitable manner, and a disposition to gossip. I have heard that he sometimes becomes so interested in discussing the prevalent topics of the day, that he has left his patients without entering upon the subject of their ailments. I dare say he would do a good action as willingly as any other man; but he has a patronising air. When I “meet him,” he “hums” and “hahs,” puts his hands in his pockets, and looks at his gold repeater. He has no children—no relations to stretch out craving hands towards him; but he loves his money, and likes to hear the chink of it as he paces up and down the sick room. His friends say: “An extraordinary man, Barlington! Lets no grass grow under his feet! He drove down to Fetterkin yesterday morning, to be present at an operation; came back at eleven, a.m., sees his patients; off again by the train to Limpfold, catches the return at five, and pockets his fifty guineas for the day;—a fact—I had it from himself.”
And Mr. Barlington is just the man to tell it with infinite gusto. It is not long since Mr. Barlington was talking to my pretty little cousin, Mrs. Moreton. She was wondering how I, Dr. Plympton, was getting on.
“Oh!” says Barlington, “I should say Plympton has a fairish practice—a fairish practice. Jeremiah Peters, Esq., is a patient of his. He’s of the right sort. Plympton’s doing pretty well.”
And he strokes his chin, and blows the dust off his velvet cuffs. And then he said that he did not see why I should not have a first-rate practice in Rexford. And my pretty little cousin (to whom Barlington is apt to be very communicative) told it me with great glee, for she is a kind little soul; but it did not do me much good. For a few minutes I cheered up, and felt better; but variations of mind don’t provide payment of bills, or clothe my seven children.
One morning, standing at my drawing-room window, which looks up Clifton Street, I watched Barlington making his calls. He comes out of one house, pocketing his fee—drives on to the next, enters, and returns, repeating the same agreeable operation—next door but one just varies the formula by holding a circular parcel of white paper in his finger and thumb,—all the while as