"I can't get along so fast as you, doctor,"
he pleaded.

"Can't you," said I, "but why not;—are
you lame?"

"Can't go so fast as your nag, sir, I means,"
said he.

"My good boy," replied I, quickly, "I
have not got a nag, so we will keep company."

Gracious goodness! how that boy did
stare. No nag; why Doctor Smith had had
two horses, and even Doctor Jones (my
predecessor, who was not considered very highly
of) one very good pony, until he killed it
with over work. However, if I had had a
whole stud I should not have found my way
to Chilling Bottom that night without a
guide; what slender wheel-marks were upon
the turf being inches deep under the snow,
and no land marks for the whole five miles'
distance, save a patch of furze, one tree, and
one ruined shepherd's hurdle. After having
accomplished my errand, I had to wait for
daylight to get home again, only there to
find a second messenger arrived in hot haste,
hours ago, to request my attendance in
another extremity of Milston. It was a healthy
parish enough, and neither of these were
cases of disease; but among so very
straggling a population I wore three pairs of boots
out in a fortnight. My constitution, too,
naturally strong enough, I found to be by no
means equal to three and twenty miles a-day,
beside nightwork; my uncle, therefore, let
me have thirty-five pounds to buy a horse
with—a cheaper animal would have been at
the knacker's in no time, with such work as
it had to do for me; and I had then that
animal and myself to maintain upon eight
pounds per annum, the average extra allowance
for midwifery and vaccination cases.
The few rich people in Milston parish
preferred, when indisposed, sending for their own
medical man from the county town, or even
telegraphing to London, to giving a young
fellow like me a chance of making my bread;
and, when they sent for me to their domestics,
my charges were sometimes criticised
in the drawing-room even less generously
than in the servants' hall. My only chance,
indeed, not of getting my living, but of
lessening rny necessary debts, lay among the
families of the yeomen; and it is well known
how that class of patient is accustomed both
to estimate and to remunerate their
unfortunate parochial advisers. If, indeed, it be
possible in the present state of the medical
labour market to get skill good enough for
paupers at such a price as is now given by
parish unions, their medicines (as my uncle
the apothecary knows) must needs at least
be far from genuine: most of the drugs
marked Poison with such superfluous caution,
in my bargain of a dispensary, I could have
swallowed with the most perfect safety; and
out of thirteen leeches I only found one which
was a nipper, and that only under the greatest
provocation, when his tail was pinched.

Time for the theoretical study of my
profession, or for mental improvement of any
kind, I had of course little enough; whilst
society, after having asked me to dine once
with the squire, and twice with the vicar,
left me with quiet dignity to gin and water
and the farmers for ever afterwards. Nor
was Milston hard upon me, unjust, or
unremunerative, in comparison with other parishes
to which I have been in bondage since that
time. Grindwell, Hants (population two
thousand), where I had the workhouse, for
instance, and where in board of guardians
assembled, my allowance of thirty-five pounds
per annum was reduced to thirty pounds, on
account of the improvement in the parochial
health during the first year of my services;
where every quarter I was severely
admonished for ordering meat to weakly patients,
and port wine after confinements to pauper
females, which the board decided to be "a
precious fine game indeed," and one to be
stopped forthwith. Once, in the far north,
my salary was but eighteen pounds a-year,
with a scanty population indeed, but lying at
distances of many miles apart—in nooks of
mountains, at the ends of roadless valleys, and
upon the banks of craggy streams, in winter
time overflowed and dangerous. There was
here, however, a good medical club of about
one hundred paying members; and although
they sent for me mostly (as such members
will do) whenever they had taken cold or too
much whiskey, yet I managed to make both
ends meet at the year's end—within six and
twenty pounds. This deficit even then still
always returning, I was at last fain to give up
practising on my own account at all, and am
now assistant surgeon to a gentleman with a
large southern connection. He pays me a
certain sum, considerably larger than his
own stipend (which is a little over a penny
a head), to take all the paupers off his hands,
it being understood that I never enter a
paying patient's house without his leave;
nor do I think that it is he that should be
blamed when I find, as I did a week ago, a
woman with dropsy partaking of the same
medicine which was left in the bottle by her
husband, who died of consumption more than
a year ago!

In July will be published, price Five Shillings, and Six-
pence, neatly bound in cloth,
THE FIFTEENTH VOLUME
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
Containing the Numbers issues between the Third of
January and the Twenty-seventh of June of the present
year.