is sufficiently recovered from this delirium cum tremore, I will reason with him, ere he is irretrievably lost. At the end of a fortnight Barnet was himself again.
One morning he began to question me as to the nature of his recent malady. I did not feel that the time was fully arrived, and I would have postponed it. But an answer he would have. If I had lashed myself into a fury of enthusiasm, it would have passed for good fellowship, and I should have lost nothing by my candour. Many men would have exaggerated his case, and have made excuses which they knew were not tenable. I considered, if I spoke the truth candidly and mildly, reproaches were for his own conscience; excuses came not near the subject. For Barnet was rich and healthy, with a well-conducted family, whose only grief consisted in his deplorable self-indulgence.
So I gave him the simple truth, without any circumlocution whatever. And what did he say?
“If I am to hear,” said Barnet, “why not let me have it, in a good bluff Jerry-go-round sort of manner, and have done with it? but in that sleek milk-and-water way, like a cat treading on paper,—why, hang it!”
And so, when Barnet and I met in Eye Lane a week after, he would not look at me.
There is a sort of fashion in bluntness. If you come out with a slang word or two to such men as Barnet, rant and tear, and call heaven and earth to witness a plain fact, it goes for something. To be quiet, composed, and gentlemanlike, is to be nothing; it is to be namby-pamby.
“Why, man, you swill like a porpoise, and are as bloated as one!” is the blunt style of expression. “Why, good sir, you drink much more than is good for you!” is the other. Each school has its disciples; and, although the two come to much the same conclusion, the ethics that lead to the one are of a coarser study than those that lead to the other.
Being much at home, and Mrs. Plympton having the house cleaned down at the time, I was left more to myself than is usually the case. To employ myself, I made some improvements upon an inclined plane for fractures, and Jeremiah Peters, Esq., just happening to pay his account, I devoted 10l. to registering my idea. I was full of hope of it; it had many points to recommend it to the use of the profession. I began to find myself whistling when I sat alone in my study, comparatively light-hearted. I found myself speculating as to how Tomlinson would regard me when I paid him the whole of his bill. I wondered how it would feel if I were to pay off everybody, and owe nothing. I used to look knowingly up at Sophia when she came to see what I was about, and say mysteriously, “There was no knowing what Plympton’s improvement might not do for us, after all.”
But the six months went by. The “taxes” had not been paid; the “gas” must be attended to; Mrs. Dubbins had sent three times for the amount of her bill; and my improved plane, as Barnet would say, “walked into the middle of next week.” Barlington, whom I had consulted, didn’t think much of it. “It might do, or it might not. He wouldn’t like to lend money upon it.” That was just a figure of speech, nothing more.
But the week after my probationary time was out, and my chance of protecting my invention had gone by, what does Barlington do? He goes to Gibbs, of the Patent Office, registers a slight alteration upon my design, and calls it “Barlington’s Improved!” Then he orders a quantity to be made forthwith, and supplies them at a large profit to the Rexford Infirmary.
Yet Barlington drives his carriage, and is making his thousands a-year; and I am waiting for the patients that never come!
I tried my hand at authorship. I gave to the world, “Plympton on the Action of the Coraco-brachialis,” “Speculations on the Spheno-maxillary Ganglion,” and “Plympton on the Pineal Gland.” My publishers, Tifflin and Snudbury, foretold me golden opinions, and the gratitude of a discerning public. The “Coraco-brachialis” cost me thirty pounds, and brought me in seven at the end of nine months. The “Speculations” I sold to Tifflin and Snudbury for 15l.; and to this day it holds a certain position in medical literature.
Jeremiah Peters met me in the City last Wednesday. Barlington once said:
“It was a good thing to be seen talking to Peters; it was as though you had a heavy balance as your banker’s.”
Well, Jeremiah drew out his pocket-book, and said to me,
“Dr. Plympton, can’t you give me a sovereign for the widow Jones?”
I shook my head. “Gold doesn’t come so easily into my pockets,” I said, smiling; and I could not help but think, “Does he recollect that I have seven children? if he does not, I do.”
When I went home, I observed to Mrs. Plympton, “How would Mr. Peters have opened his eyes if I had said quietly to him, as he looked at me, ‘Mr. Peters, I am not making a living!’”
Sophia laughed, and said, “It would have been a good joke,—it would indeed.” And as she fidgeted about, and smoothed her apron with an assumed air of indifference, I saw the quiver that went across her face, in spite of the smile upon her lips.
And how is it, I would ask, that while so many inferior to myself, both in education and abilities, get on, I am left behind? I am not disagreeable; if I were, would Mrs. Jameson show me her new bonnets? would Miss Thompson try on her new cloak for me to see? would Smith ask my advice before entering into the shipping business? or George Purples, Esq., request me to give my opinion upon his son George’s aptitude for the army? No, I am not disagreeable; that is not to be maintained.
No one would doubt that I was attentive, did they see me, day after day, when I return from the few calls I have to make, sitting down, book in hand, or teaching my children—always employed in some way on the spot, lest I should lose a chance patient.
Sophia sometimes laughingly tells me that I am