take the Woodman's Club? Because I
wanted thirty pounds a year; because I
wanted and liked work too, feeling pleasure
—as only the dullest surgeons do not— in the
active exercise of my profession, and because
I hoped thereby to increase my knowledge,
my power, and my connection. When I had
a Dispensary and other Clubs added to the
parish, why did I endeavour to do all that
work single-handed? Because I had not at
that time so much private practice as enabled
me to pay the cost of an assistant. It is not
pure labour that the country apothecary
spends upon his parish and his Clubs. They
oblige him to run up a heavy drug bill, to buy
expensive instruments, and to keep a horse.

The drug bill of a young country surgeon
who has parish work and Clubs, with very
little private practice, easily reaches fifty
pounds a year; and if he has no friend from
whom to borrow instruments, the cost of
them is serious. He must be prepared to
meet every emergency and to perform any
operation. He cannot send, as he would in
London, for assistance from the hospitals;
and though he may send for any surgeon in
his neighbourhood by way of consultation, to
advise with him, or take part in the
responsibility of any obviously active measure, yet
the performance of the active measure must
be by himself. When he transfers the duty
to a rival, he confesses his inferior ability, and
transfers to the prompter man his patient's
confidence. The country surgeon, if he would
act for himself, and incur no risk of figuring
unpleasantly at inquests, must have at hand every
instrument which, like the stomach-pump,
may be demanded suddenly, and must purchase
others as they are called into request. If he
has much poor practice, and nobody to
borrow from during his first years, while he
can least afford any expense, the call for one
instrument after another will be tolerably
brisk. In the first quarter of my attendance on
the Ancient Woodmen, I spent all the quarter's
money profit on an instrument required for
the performance on a Club member of an
operation not likely to be called for half-a-
dozen times in a long course of practice. I
had a broken leg two or three miles away in
one direction, and a fever case requiring for
some time daily attention two or three miles
off in another. In addition to the cases of
average slightness furnished by my Club, I
was summoned to some dozen members who
had nothing particularly the matter with
them, and who only sent for their doctor on
some trivial errand, because they had nothing
to pay for his attendance.

All this time the followers of Parkinson
were on the watch to register against me
cases of neglect.

Of course they would and did occur; but
as like cases were common to every surgeon
in the parish, they were easily attributed to
the general carelessness of medical men in
their attendance upon the poor. They did
me no harm; but as Midsummer, and the
great annual Club day and Club dinner drew
near, I was warned that a hostile motion was
on foot, that Beerleyites and Parkinsonites
were forming a coalition, and that my ownites
could not maintain me in my place if I did
not wipe a certain stain out of my character.

That stain was Pride; inasmuch as the
opposing faction, led by mine host of the
Thistle, averred that it was very ungracious
in me never to have come down to the monthly
meetings to take my glass of beer with the
assembled brethren. I was too proud to
associate with working men. I was indeed
spending my life among them and upon them,
but the main point was the glass of beer.
Besides, my pride was well enough known, for
I had missed the annual dinner at another of
my Clubs, and had put upon it the indignity of
sending an apprentice, a mere boy, who could
not carve a sausage. I was warned, therefore,
by friendly Woodmen, that whatever I
might think about the best employment of
my time, if I did not go to the Woodman's
dinner, I should in all probability get notice
of dismissal from the Woodman's Club.

I revoked therefore my tacit intention to
pay for the dinner, and abstain from eating
it. True it is that the eating and smelling of
a quantity of hot meat, and the breathing of
tobacco smoke, in the middle of a hot
working-day in July, can be considered only as a
serious infliction; but I dared not trifle with
my character. Already the growth of my
private practice had been seriously retarded
by my unprofessional conduct in not wearing
a beaver hat. Subject to much physical
fatigue, and liable to headache, I had found hats
a source of torment, and wore therefore, in
spite of much scandal, a light fur cap in winter,
and in summer a straw hat, using Leghorn in
deference to public notions of respectability.
The want of a black hat retarded the growth of
my private practice very seriously. A very
lady-like individual, wife of a small grocer,
Mrs. Evans, frequently declared that "she had
heard me to be clever, and would have sent
for me in her late illness, but she could not
think of having a doctor come to her house in
a cap, it was so very unusual." As I really
could not give in on the hat question, it was a
lucky day for me when I afterwards bethought
myself of making up for the loose style of
dress upon my head, by being very stiff about
the neck. I took to the wearing of white
neckcloths with the happiest effect. Everybody
thought of the Church: I looked so good
and correct in a clean white neckcloth, that I
drew a tooth for Mrs. Evans in the second
week of it. My practice rose steadily from
that date, and in popularity I became a rival
even to the rector. What I should have done,
if I had effected a crisis by repenting of my
fur and straw, and resolving to wear a good
hat for the remainder of my days, and be at
peace with all men, I don't know. Hats I
continue to abominate.