good-humoured and unconscious of offence as need be, while I looked on and felt disposed to be bilious.
There is Scorlings. He is a rough, rude, half-educated man, with plenty of vulgar impudence and random braggadocio. Scorlings is not well up in his profession. He has lately set up a close carriage; so it must pay with him. How does he do it? He lives round the corner. The situation of his house is not to compare with mine; but he can drive his carriage, and I go plodding along in my shabby second-hand cabriolet, that does not pay its expenses.
Two years ago, I was attending a woman suffering from ovarian dropsy. She was fifty years of age, and much enfeebled with her complaint. My remedies were successful, as far as remedies can be in such cases. She greatly improved, and I had hopes that she might live a considerable time, with rigid adherence to the rules I had laid down for her. Her friend, Mrs. Cole, lived next door. Scorlings is a great gun with Mrs. Cole. My patient was worried continually about Scorlings; and one day he pays Mrs. Morris a friendly call. During this accidental visit he pities and sympathizes, and assures her he can effect a cure. It ends with his telling Mrs. Morris, that in three months she will be herself again, that her complaint is nothing more than that incidental to married ladies. I receive a note, very civil and polite, informing me that it is not necessary that I should call again. But of course I did call, and found Scorlings and Mrs. Morris in the very heart of a consultation.
Poor woman! she died in three weeks. On her death-bed she sent for me, feeling the great mistake she had made; but it was too late. I arrived only to see her lying still and calm enough, the victim of gross ignorance. Scorlings is a loud-talking, blustering man. When he goes into a house, he makes coarse jokes with the women, and is hale fellow, well met, with the men. I am a man of few words, and it doesn’t pay, in my opinion.
Scorlings slaps the master on the back, pats the wife’s cheek, chucks the daughter under the chin, tosses up the baby. I do none of these things, and Rexford does not understand me.
Scorlings sends out dozens of mixtures, draughts, and pills,—blisters, ointments, and lotions. I approve of these things, but only as aids; Scorlings deals in nothing else. He has no faith in diet, or in anything. He believes in physic; nothing but physic will do with him. Scorlings and I don’t speak; since Mrs. Morris died, I have ignored him. He sent me an insolent letter, ill composed and ill-spelt; to which I replied, by informing him that I declined any discussion whatever with men of his grade; and he has been my relentless enemy ever since.
But if I must fail, let it be the failure of honesty; and let me do it honourably, if that is all I can do.
When I was a student in London, old Wrigley used to tell me,
“Plympton, you must humbug! There’s nothing to be done without it. By George, Plympton! but if you mean to take, you must use plenty of humbug!”
I used to wonder at an old man, such as he, talking in that way, and answer,
“Indeed, sir, but I never will. If they won’t take me for the real metal, they never shall for the dross.”
And he would shake his head, and laugh over his short pipe at nights, when he had come in, and had done for the day, as though it was fine talking, and he knew better.
And so twelve years have I plodded along in this large manufacturing town of Rexford, living from hand to mouth, how I scarcely know; and find myself just the same as when I first started, only so much older, so much more careworn, so much less able to battle with the difficulties that close in around me.
I used to live in Greg Street. For seven years we endured that wretched habitation. Whenever the wind was in the east the smoke persisted in stopping in-doors. Whenever it rained, the stench that came up from the cellars was something fearful. But the light seemed afraid of us. When a ray of sunshine did find its way in, it looked as though it had been mistaken, and did not feel itself at home. My wife and I used feebly to assert to one another, that “it wasn’t really so bad.” Then my wife’s uncle left Sophia a legacy; and we removed by the advice of my well-to-do friend, Jeremiah Peters, Esq., to Wimpledown House, a most eligible situation for a medical man.
“Who would think,” said Jeremiah Peters, “of opening a first-rate jeweller’s shop in a back street?” meaning, of course, that a good situation was of much importance.
I had my surgery-door made to open upon Clifton Street, the house fronting, as I said before, in Derby Place. I have a convenient waiting-room, down the surgery-passage, where patients were to sit until the ordinary consulting-room should be at liberty; for, as I said to Sophia, “People did not like to wait in draughty passages.” This waiting-room will hold nine persons; and there are nine chairs placed. But the only dust that is ever removed from them comes off with the daily duster.
I have never known more than one person sit in that room at one time. And the schoolboyish hope that five years ago dictated such preparation, every time I enter that apartment laughs me to scorn.
For a time after we came to Wimpledown House, I thought we should have done better. But the few patients that came seemed to think, that if they paid me for my medicine and advice they must enter into all their family affairs. Of course, I was willing enough to purchase their goodwill by a little sympathy; but after a time they fell short, and so I sat waiting for the patients that never came!
Three months ago, Samuel Barnet, Esq., sent for me. I found him sitting upon his bed, with two chairs, the two front legs being placed parallel with the ground, and the backs uppermost. Tapes were fastened from the shoulders of the chairs, and drawn inside the bed-posts, and Barnet was driving for his life. I had heard of his abandonment to drink, and I said within myself, when he