last new comer I was very popular among
the poor; and the miraculous recovery of a
patient whom I had left to nature, and to
whom I had administered water tinged with
a little compound tincture of cardamoms, had
created for me an enormous reputation in the
immediate neighbourhood of some of the
most influential of the Ancient Woodmen.
Beerley—who was surgeon to the Club—had
very often been re-elected in spite of a
repeated half-yearly notice of dismissal, on
account of various short-comings; but it
appeared at length to be quite obstinately
settled that his last half year of office had
arrived. It was then clear to all the parish
that the choice of a new surgeon would lie
between me and my neighbour Parkinson.

To compare the teaching and the training
which is of a kind to make the thoroughly
well-educated medical man a genuine philosopher,
with all the petty details of the life he
has to lead in many thousand cases as a
general practitioner, would be a very edifying
task. Parkinson and I had terrible
heartburnings about that Club, the appointment
to which involved attendance on a hundred
and fifty men for the payment of four shillings
a year from each. But then we reasoned,
These men are in receipt of good pay; among
the colliers are some charter-masters, and
whoever pleases them attends, perhaps, their
families who are not members of the Club,
and against whom he may add up a bill.
Besides, it is all— that indefinable mystery—
connection. Therefore I quarrelled with
Parkinson, because he canvassed among the
Ancient Woodmen, insinuated himself into
the hearts of colliers who had votes, and even
courted some of them at the Thistle itself,
which is the house at which my Club
assembles, and there won the goodwill of the
host —always an influential person—  by
joviality, and an affected love of beer. I thought
this unprofessional, and I cut Parkinson; for
I was myself a very Coriolanus in the way of
canvassing.

Nevertheless, I was elected. The secretary
of our branch of the Ancient Order of Woodmen,
accompanied by a member or two, came
to announce to me, in a dignified way, the
cheering fact. I accepted office with none
the less dignity, because I knew the messenger
to have been one of my opponents. Parkinson
attended the secretary's family, and if I
were to behave too cordially towards the
head of that family, it might be inferred
that I desired to take away some part of
Parkinson's practice. I desired very much
that it should come to me, but had no right
or wish to take it; therefore, I was in
constant dread lest some good-humoured word
or bit of cheerful gossip might, by some
possibility, be interpreted into an attempt at theft.

Since it is necessary that the surgeon to
the Woodmen should, himself, be initiated
as a member of that ancient order, my first
duty to my Club was to become a Woodman
on the next evening of meeting. On that
evening I went down for the first time to my
Club-house, the Thistle, a picturesque inn at
the bottom of a hill road, overlooking a swift
river. The evening turned out to be a black
January night; and, as I sat by a dim light in
the host's parlour, awaiting the moment of
formal introduction to the assembled Woodmen
upstairs; getting an occasional sight of
the unfriendly face of the host, whose ale I
was now, as in duty bound, for the first time
tasting; and listening to the rush of the river
outside, and the discordant blowing of Woodmen's
horns upstairs, every now and then, at
certain stages of the ceremony; I thought
myself the loneliest of poor young country
doctors.

At length a functionary with a Woodman's
club in his hand, came for me, and ushered
me upstairs to a door, before which stood
another club-bearer, who beat upon it in a
mystic way, who received answer mystically
from within, and so procured admittance.
Then I beheld my Club in its supremest
glory.  Its big horns, its mace, its badges,
and its officers and members, looking powerfully
grave, as I was set upon a wooden
stool. The President then rose and read to
me, as well as he could, a very long sermon
indeed, out of a little book, concerning Woodmen
from Adam and Eve downwards, and
the duties and kind feelings by which Woodmen
are bound together. I thought there
was more than a spark of wholesome, human
goodness at the bottom of it; but the absurd
solemnity of the assembly, the pantomime
properties represented by the colossal horns,
and the amazing way in which the President
pronounced all the hard words he came to,
made it extremely difficult for me to fill the
interesting situation in which I was placed
without a display, before the court, of
unbecoming levity. I repeated certain forms,
was instructed in certain childish mysteries,
and, kneeling on the footstool, repeated the
formal vow not to reveal them to the
uninitiate. Having done that, I paid a guinea,
as the contribution of an honorary member.

The social business of the evening then
commenced; the grave court resolved itself into
an assembly of colliers and potters, who
smoked pipes and drank beer in a spirit of
good fellowship, and abounded in courtesy
and politeness towards their newly-elected
doctor. The great majority of working
men are from their hearts truly courteous
and polite. I wish to say something about
this. I began practice as assistant in a purely
agricultural district, employed by a practitioner
of ample independent means. From
the first day that I went there, very young
and utterly unknown, every cottager touched
his hat to me. Strangers who came on a
visit to the place, if they wore good clothes,
were greeted invariably with touched hats,
bows, and curtsies. That is not courtesy, it
is the mark of a degraded state of feeling