BH "THE STORY OF OUR LIVES FROM TEAR TO YEAR."—SHAKESPEARE. ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. K°- 120.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1861, [PiucE 2d. been acquired. Thus, having an heir for the A STRANGE STORY. one, he had long looked about for an heir to the BY THE AUTHOR OF *'MY NOVEL," *'RIENZI," &C, other, and now resolved on finding that heir in me. So when we parted Dr. Eaber made me promise to CHATTER I. correspond with him regularly, and it was not long IN the year 18— I setlled as a physician at before he disclosed by letter the plans he had one of the wealthiest of our great English tow^ns, formed in my favour. He said that he was grow­ which I will designate by the initial L . I ing old; his practice was beyond his strength; was yet young, but I had acquired some repu­ he needed a partner; he was not disposed to put tation by a professional work which is, I believe, up to sale the health of patients whom he had still amongst the received authorities on the sub­ learned to regard as his children; money was no ject of which it treats. I had studied at Edin­ object to him, but it was an object close at his burgh and at Paris, and had borne away from heart that the humanity he had served, and the both those illustrious schools of medicine what­ reputation he had acquired, should suffer no loss ever guarantees for futui'c distinction the praise in his choice of a successor. In fine, he proposed of professors -may concede to the ambition of that I should at once come to L as his part­ students. On becoming a member of the College ner, with the view of succeeding to his entire of Physicians, I made a tour of the principal practice at the end of two years, when it was liis cities of Europe, taking letters of introduction intention to retire. to eminent medical men; and gathering from The opening into fortune thus afforded to me many theories and modes of treatment, hints to was one that rarely presents itself to a young enlarge the foundations of unprejudiced and com­ man entering upon an overcrowded profession. prehensive practice; I had resolved to fix my And to an aspirant less allured by the desire of ultimate residence in London. But before this fortune than the hope of distinction, the fame of preparatory tour was completed, my resolve was the physician who thus generously offered to me changed by one of those unexpected events which the inestimable benefits of his long experience, determine the fate man in vain would work out and his cordial introduction, was in itself an as­ for himself. In passing through the Tyrol, on surance that a metropolitan practice is not essen­ my w^ay into the north of Italy, I found in a small tial to a national renown. um, remote from medical attendance, an English I went, then, to L , and before the two traveller—seized with acute inflammation of the years of my partnership had expired, my success lungs, and in a state of imminent danger. I de­ justified my kind friend's selection, and far more voted myself to him night and day, and, perhaps, than realised my own expectations. I was fortu­ more through careful nursing than active reme­ nate in effecting some notable cures in the dies, I had the happiness to effect his complete earliest cases submitted to me, and it is every­ recovery. The traveller proved to be Julius Eaber, thing in the career of a physician when good a physician of great distinction—contented to re­ luck wins betimes for him that confidence side, where he was born, in the provincial city of which patients rarely accord except to lengthened L 3 but whose reputation as a profound and experience. To the rapid facility with which original pathologist was widely spread; and whose my way was made, some circumstances apart writings had formed no unimportant part of my from professional skiU probably combined. I special studies. It was during a short holiday ex­ was saved from the suspicion of a medical adven­ cursion, from which he was about to return with turer by the accidents of birth and fortiuie. I renovated vigour, that he had been thus stricken belonged to an ancient family (a branch of the down. The patient so accidentally met with, once powerful border clan of the Eenwicks), became the founder of my professional fortunes. that had for many generations held a fair estate He conceived a warm attachment for me; per­ in the neighbourhood of Windermere. As an haps the more affectionate because he was a only son I had succeeded to that estate on at­ childless bachelor, and the nephew who would taining my majority, and had sold it to pay off' succeed to his wealth evinced no desire to the debts which had been made by my father, succeed to the toils by which the wealth had who had the costly tastes of an antiquarian VOL. V, 120 458 [August 10, 1861,] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [Conducted by and collector. The residue on the sale en­ traders, and that of a few privileged families in­ sured me a modest independence apart from the habiting a part of the town aloof from the marts profits of ai profession, and as I had not heern of commerce, and called the Abbey Hill. These legally bound to defray my father's debts, so I superb Areopagites exercised over the wives and obtained that character for disinterestedness and daughters of the inferior citizens to whom all integrity which always in England tends to pro­ of L , except the Abbey HiU, owed its pro­ pitiate the pubhc to the successes achieved by sperity, the same kind of mysterious influence industry or talent. Perhaps, too, any professional which the fine ladies of Mayfair and Belgravia ability I might possess was the more readily con­ are reported to hold over the female denizens of ceded, because I had cultivated with assiduity Bloomsbury and Marylebone. the sciences and the scholarship which are col­ Abbey HiU was not opulent; but it was power­ laterally connected with the study of medicine. ful by a concentration of its resources in all Thus, in a word, I established a social position matters of patronage. Abbey Hill had its own which came in aid of my professional repute, and mUliner, and its own draper, its own confectioner, silenced much of that envy which usuaUy em­ butcher,^ baker, and tea-dealer, and the patronage bitters and sometimes impedes success. of Abbey HiU was like the patronage of royalty, Dr. Eaber retired at the end of the two years less lucrative in itself than as a solemn certificate agreed upon. He went abroad; and being, of general merit. The shops on which Abbey though advanced in years, of a frame still robust, Hill conferred its custom were certainly not the and habits of mind stiU inquiring and eager, he cheapest, possibly not the best. But they were commenced a lengthened course of foreign travel, undeniably the most imposing. The proprietors during which our correspondence, at first fre­ were decorously pompous—the shopmen super­ quent, gradually languished, and finally died ciliously polite. They could not be more so if they away. hadbelongedtotheState,andbeenpaidbyapublic I succeeded at once to the larger part of the which they benefited and despised. The ladies practice which the labours of thirty years had of Low Town (as the city subjacent to the Hill secured to my predecessor. My chief rival was had been styled from a date remote in the feudal a Dr. Lloyd, a benevolent, fervid man, not with­ ages) entered those shops with a certain awe, out genius—^if genius be present where judgment and left them with a certain pride. There they is absent; not without science, if that maybe had learned what the Hill approved. There science which fails in precision. One of those they had bought what the HiU had purchased. It clever desultory men who, in adopting a profes­ is much in this life to be quite sure that we sion, do not give up to it the whole force and are in the right, whatever that conviction may heat of their minds. Men of that kind habi­ cost us. Abbey Hill had been in the habit of tually accept a mechanical routine, because in appointing, amongst other objects of patron­ the exercise of their ostensible calling their ima­ age, its o"wn physician. But that habit bad ginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits faUen into disuse during the latter years of more alluring. Therefore, in their proper voca­ my predecessor's practice. His superiority over tion they are seldom bold or inventive—out of it all other medical men in the town had become they are sometimes both to excess. Aiid when so incontestable, that, though he was emphati­ they do take up a novelty in their own profession cally the doctor of Low Town, the head of its they cherish it with an obstinate tenacity, and an hospitals and infirmaries, and by birth related to extravagant passion, unknown to those quiet its principal traders, stiU as Abbey HUl was occa­ philosophers who take up novelties every day, sionally subject to the physical infirmities of examine them with the sobriety of practised meaner mortals, so on those occasions it deemed eyes, to lay down altogether, modify in part, or it best not to push the point of honour to the accept in whole, according as inductive experi­ wanton sacrifice of Ufe.