to exercise my maiden efforts in pills and mixtures, while my principal indulged freely in whiskey in his own room over the surgery. He was a hard drinker, who treated his wife as badly as he did his patients, and whose habit it was to enter the cottages of poor people who could not pay him, and seize whatever piece of family china, bric-a-brac, or old oak which he fancied, and forcibly carry it away as payment of the debt owing. By this means, he had, in the course of ten years, made quite a presentable collection of curios, although he had more than once very narrowly escaped getting into serious trouble over it.

I spent a miserable year driving, by day and by night, in sunshine and rain, far afield over the Suffolk plains, for owing to my principal's penchant for drink, the greater part of the work devolved upon myself. The crisis occurred, however, when I had been with him some eighteen months. While in a state of intoxication, he was called out to treat a man who had met with a serious accident in a neighboring village. On his return, he gave me certain instructions and sent me back to visit the patient. The instructions—technical ones, with which it is useless to puzzle the reader—I carried out to the letter, with the result that the poor fellow's life was lost. Then followed an inquest, exposure, censure from the coroner, a rider from the jury, and my employer, with perfect sangfroid, succeeded in fastening the blame upon myself to save the scanty reputation he still enjoyed over the countryside.

The jury was, of course, unaware that he was intoxicated when he attended the man and committed the fatal blunder, while I, in perfect innocence, had obeyed his injunctions. It is useless, however, to protest before a coroner; therefore, I at once resigned my position, and that same night returned to London full of indignation at the treatment I had received.

My next practice was as an assistant to a man at Hull, who proved an impossible person, and through the five years that followed, I did my best to alleviate human ills in Carlisle, Derby, Cheltenham, and Leeds, respectively.Bob's sudden suggestion piqued my curiosity. I turned to him, waiting for him to continue.

He hesitated for a moment, as if unsure how to broach the topic. Then, looking me straight in the eye, he spoke.

"You know, old chap, business has been rather slow lately. I've been thinking...what if you were to pose as a patient? You know, help me drum up a bit of business."

I was taken aback 

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