in his own town, the honours of a public
statue? At the same time I know a dozen,
and the world could reckon up more than
a hundred physicians who are men of
science, who are incorporating their names
with the history of their art, and who, for
want of a due practical recognition of their
merits by the doctor-needing public, are
doomed for the term of their natural lives
to eat cold mutton and wear rusty clothes.

Ladies and gentlemen, you certainly will
benefit yourselves if, when you select your
own attendants from the coming race of
medical practitioners, you look less than your
forefathers have looked to tact and exterior
manner, and institute a strict search after
skill and merit. Attend, I entreat you, less to
the recommendations of your nurses and your
neighbours, and prefer rather physicians
who have obtained honour among men really
qualified to pass a verdict upon their attainments.
Now, if a man labours much in his
profession with his head at home when he
ought to be dining out and winning good
opinions by his urbanity and by the
geniality of his professional deportment, he is
commonly said to be a theorist, and left to
eat the covers of his books, or to nibble his
pen. Most of the really first-rate medical
practitioners indeed who have obtained large
practices, had manner as well as matter in
them, tact as well as talent.

There may be some justice in this disposition
of things; but, that the use of a little wise
discrimination by the public in the choice of
medical attendants, would stimulate the
students more than all the introductory
orations that were ever spoken, and, in due time,
exalt the whole profession —strengthening
very much its power to do good —I think I
can make evident.

When I hinted at a little sadness that
accompanied the thought of the respective futures
of the students now at work in all our
hospitals, a retrospect lay at the bottom of
my mind. I can go back to my own student
times, and recal the groups that sat about
me in the lecture-room. Enough time has
elapsed to let me see, in very many cases,
how they have been dealt with by the world.
I do not know whether it is everywhere so,
but at St. Poultice's there is, or used to be, a
spirit of fellowship abroad. There is a band
of us alive, firmly believing that St. Poultice's
never had so good a set of men studying
together as there were in our time. So we,
who were "respectable" there, think of each
other, ignoring the tag-rag which belongs to
every other and all other time. I suppose
that students of each year grow up in the
satisfaction of the same persuasion. Never
mind that. One consequence of this fellow
feeling is, that we who are at work (or
play) together look and inquire much after
one another. If I meet Brown he knows
where Thompson is, and must tell me how
Thompson is getting on. I, having seen
Jenkins lately, tell all I know of him. Every
one of us is a repertory of the histories of
nearly all his old companions at St. Poultice's.
So complete is our feeling in this way, that
I was stopped in the road by a gentleman
the other day. "Your name," he said, "is
Point."

"Yes," I replied; "and yours, I think, is
Comma." I didn't know him at all, but
guessed at hazard that he must be some
St Poultice man.

"No," he said, "I'm Colon, What are you
doing? How are you getting on?" We
exchanged questions and cards and shall
visit; but I am confident that when we were
at hospital together we never exchanged two
words. We were not acquaintances at all;
merely in fact seeing each other there
occasionally.

Now, I will relate fairly and truly a few
cases of the after careers of some of the
students I knew best. There was Pumpson to
begin with, a fine manly broad-chested fellow,
who worked like a steam-engine; but kept
his work oiled so pleasantly that there was
no creak, puff, pant, or sign of labour to be
detected in him. To see him with his tails
up before the library fire, chattering
pleasantly, you would suppose that he was a
man who scorned to fag. He liked a game
at billiards; he was a leading member of
our boat club; he was a leading man in
half a dozen odd things that smelt rather
of the flowers than the fruits of student
life; but there was not one among us really
working so earnestly as Pumpson. He was
quick in acquisition of all kinds of
knowledge, and he had a taste for everything
intellectual and pleasant; but he toiled so
thoroughly in his own quiet way —burning I do
not know how many pints of oil per month in
his own room —that he carried away the cream
of all the honours for which we were
expected to compete. Finally, he attracted
the attention of our great authorities so much,
that a good foreign appointment was offered to
him at the close of his student career. He
declined it as beneath the aim of his ambition,
and went off, a highly trained physician, to
create a practice in a large provincial town.

I spent a week lately in Pumpson's town,
and found our old friend prosperous enough.
He has a wife and children about him, and he
lives in a good house in his old pleasant way;
for he has private means. Moreover, there is
nobody in the said town of Feverton more
widely known. Pumpson is every public
body's secretary; the foremost man in every
scientific coterie; great at the chess club; great
as a lecturer at the local medical school; great
in private circles. Nevertheless, if Pumpson
had no private means he would be threadbare.
His revelations, in reply to the "How
are you getting on?" question, gave me to
understand that his professional gains would
not make him liable for income tax. Smith
and Jones, members of the Feverton public,