verse. He was in wrath because, having
by mischance forgotten to make up a
prescription, I had sent to a wealthy
customer, a bottle of air corked and capped,—
which, by an odd accident, was folded in a
favourite poem of mine, on "The Emptiness
of Things." My inadvertence gave offence.
I wrote privately to the offended customer, a
note of apology, of which I can almost
remember the words, explaining what was
the fact;—that, by one of those happy
concatenations of thought that now and then occur,
the mention of cream of tartar in the
prescription had suggested to me a poem
illustrative of the pastoral condition of life
among the Crim Tartars, and while I was
preparing my idea, I had forgotten that I
was not also preparing the prescription.
The customer in question, Mr. Milcan, a
pursy man and a cowkeeper, was very
unforgiving, and we lost him altogether.

I had an affection for my uncle Badham,
and a desire for his good-will, partly founded
on the fact that he entertained thoughts of
leaving me the main bulk of his property,
together with his shop. I promised faithfully
that I would no longer look upon his
customers as my public; that I would issue no
more verse; and, upon that condition, I
obtained leave to write it. My uncle, indeed,
took my poetry at that time to be a ferment
in young blood, a state of intellectual measles,
—and thought it advisable that the eruption
should not be suppressed.

For a time, however, I wrote no more
poetry. My hair had been cut down to
mere stubble, and the sudden change made
me so cool in the head, that my inventive
genius took more practical directions.
Many things had for some time been awaiting
investigation. I had observed that in
every boiled potato placed upon my uncle's
table, there were invariably to be seen three
small holes in a right line with one another.
The same observation I had made in other
places, and a question had thus come to
assume great prominence in my mind—Why
are there always three holes in a boiled
potato? I had even so early designed my
anthropological treatise, (written in later
years), on the Material of Trades, wherein I
show why tradesmen absorb and become
absorbed in the material by which they live.
The butcher, as we all see, becomes fleshy,
and consists of prime joints; the baker
becomes white and doughy; the shoemaker
brown and leathery; the lawyer's skin
becomes converted into parchment; usurers
turn yellow. The baker's blood, on the
other hand, is, in some measure, yielded to his
rolls; the lawyer writes on skin that
represents a part of his own substance; the gall
of the usurer goes with his gold. You will
find the essay most important. Hereafter
the fact that I wrote it will have its interest
for my biographers.

I was at work upon this very subject,
setting down thoughts as they occurred to
me on one of the last leaves of my uncle's
ledger, when one day soon after my hair had
been cut, a lovely girl came into the shop. I
knew her, of course; for she was no less
distinguished a person than Miss Bridget
Milcan, second daughter of the cowkeeper.
She was admired in all the country round
about us as the belle of Rochester. She was
considered to be a girl of great vivacity and
spirit; but I paid little attention to the fair
sex, and I knew no more of her, than I know
of her features and the sound of her voice.
Considering how recently I had provoked her
father, I feared lest Biddy Milcan might not
be the bearer to my uncle of some hostile
message, which I accordingly made haste to
intercept. Biddy cast down her eyes when I
appeared, and timidly held out to me the
wrapper from her father's bottle.

"I beg your pardon, sir," she said; "but
I thought this poem was too valuable to be
destroyed. You might desire its return."

"It is of no importance, miss," I answered;
"I have other copies, and if not, so mere a
trifle——"

"O Mr. Speckles!" she said; "sir, may I
then keep it? You cannot tell what
consolation it has brought me,—how much I do
feel the emptiness of things." She folded up
the paper carefully, and put it in her bosom.
"Indeed, sir," she went on to say, "I wished
to consult you as a professional man." She
fluttered like a moth in a pill-box, looked full
at a red bottle in the window, through which
the light streamed in a great flush over her
face, and said, "I have felt for some months
a strange sense of emptiness in the heart.
Could you do anything for me?"

"My uncle, miss——-"

"But I think you will be more likely to
understand my case."

I thought a bit, and remembered that so
far as I knew of the ailments of ladies, they
occur only in the head, nerves, heart, and
chest. The stomach is, out of delicacy,
called the heart. I thought that I understood
Miss Bridget's case, and asked about
her appetite. She sighed, and said that it
was bad. I at once recommended tripe.
That is a digestible kind of food, which is,
moreover, calculated to excite a failing
appetite. The sense of emptiness could be
removed, no doubt, with tripe. She shook
her head, and said she wished me to
prescribe. If I did not mind, she would call
again in a day or two, and tell me how she
was. I therefore undertook to fill up the
void in her heart with medicine; and began
with the remedies that seemed most cognate
to her case—pectoral lozenges and stomachic
pills. She paid me on the spot, and came
again after two days; and, in fact, every
two days, always complaining of the emptiness
at her heart, which I strove always
vainly to fill up with lozenges and pills.
These were all regularly paid for by Miss