Wine and youth are fire upon fire.—Fielding. Idleness, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes.—Burton. Firmly screwed upon the door Doth the lion-knocker frown. To-night its reign of noise is o’er; Courage, boys, we’ll have it down! Long its strength defied Every dodge we tried; But its nuts no more shall bear it, From the hinge to-night we’ll tear it. —Cruikshank’s Almanack. Jack Murphy gave his party. The winter session was nearly over, and in a few days the students would be all dispersed to the bosoms of their families. For several days past their spirits had been rising, and their fun even at lecture and in the wards was scarcely restrained within moderate bounds. Work was kept up with difficulty, and many of the men were leaving daily. Eight of the choicest spirits of the school turned up on the appointed night. There was not one of them who had not borne the brunt of battle, and won his spurs on a contested field. There was big, heavy Tom Lennard. He was the hero of the smash-up at the Chelsea Alcazar, a not very reputable, but much patronized, place of entertainment, with an open-air dancing platform. There was a fÊte one summer night there, and an attack on the place was organized by the There was Tim Finnigan, “a broth of a bhoy,” from the wilds of Galway, all fun and frolic, but good at learning, and witty as ever trod a bog or broke a head. It was he who led the raid on the Statuary Exhibition near Queen’s College one Saturday night, and carried the great nude gods and goddesses into the adjoining churchyard; so that when the good folk went to early mass, they were confronted by Venuses and Apollos, impudently airing themselves under the trees by the pathway, “mit nodings on.” The maiden lady, whose parlour window overlooked the churchyard, was horrified when she came down to breakfast that Sunday morning, to see a dreadful great plaster man unblushingly staring at her in the undraped similitude of a Greek athlete. The church was served by an order of French religious, and the agony of the poor fathers at the shocking display, rivalling the groves of Blarney, outside There was “Darkey” Dobbs; he was not christened Darkey, his swarthy complexion was the cause of his nickname. He had great mechanical ability, which he brought to bear on his practical jokes. His rapid knack of getting brass plates off doors and railings, his skill at wrenching knockers and bell-handles without alarming the owners, made him an indispensable companion of a night’s fun. It was Darkey who invented the celebrated coffee-stall joke. Four fellows hired a “growler” early one winter’s morning in the main road by the hospital. Three of them got out of the cab and called for coffee, and treated cabby; and while the attention of the stall-keeper was arrested in serving his new customers, the fourth occupant of the vehicle quietly got out, and, unperceived by anybody, tied a long cord to one of the posts of the stall and connected it with the shafts. Cabby remounted, his fares discharged him and decamped, and he drove off dragging the stall behind the vehicle, upsetting all the cups and platters, and wrecking the whole concern. It was said that the stall-keeper’s language was “not of a kind to adorn any Sunday-school book;” when the rope was cut, and the damage calculated, he found to his great grief that a pound would not cover it. It was a good deal for the poor fellow to lose, but the amusement to the perpetrators of the joke was immense, and “the greatest good of the greatest number” was one of the articles of a creed they firmly held. Then there was “Camel” Campbell, called “Camel” on account of his humpy shoulders, though he was christened It must not for a moment be supposed that all, or even the majority, of the men were as much devoted to boisterous amusements as those we have been describing. The quiet, hard workers found means to keep themselves aloof from such revelling, though even they, under the charm of the influence the leading spirits exercised over the generous, light-hearted youths who compose the majority of medical students, sometimes abandoned themselves to the spirit of devilry which often broke loose when the day’s work was over. Very hard workers, who went in for the greater prizes and scholarships, were obliged to live at a distance from the place, that they might be under the less temptation to this sort of thing. The assembled guests were in high spirits to-night. Though they had done very little of the work they were supposed to have got through, and had attended scarcely half of the lectures they ought to have heard, they had succeeded in getting their papers signed; and, with but two exceptions, they had as much credit given them on their schedules for honest work as if they had been the most assiduous and Lennard was inclined to be sentimental and romantic. “What adventures,” said he, “we should hear if the corpses in that dissecting-room over yonder could tell their histories! Unclaimed all of them! Think what that means. How low one must sink when nobody comes forward to ask the parish to bury you at its own expense! Let me conjure up a history for you of the seven subjects on the tables where we have been at work to-day. I will begin at my own, where I am ‘doing my leg.’” “Ah! I am glad you said ‘doing.’ I should have demurred to ‘dissecting,’ had you said that,” threw in Murphy. Disregarding the interruption, Lennard went on: “This old man—not so very old, about sixty I should say—has good features and toil-worn hands; was, let us say, an unfrocked parson: fell into bad ways, family disowned him; left his old associates, or they left him; gradually sank lower and lower; sold little things in the street; lived at threepenny lodging-houses; got ill; taken into the parish infirmary; died, and came here. Think of all he must have gone through! How he would remember his happy youth at school, at Oxford, his ordination, his good aspirations, the society he mixed in, and the remorse that embittered his life. This sort of thing is common enough. That woman on the next table, with the spinal fracture, a tight-rope dancer in her early days; used to delight the habituÉs of Old Vauxhall; one night fell and broke her back. Folk soon got tired of helping her. Her husband made her happy, and was good to her; till, in old age, he died, and she was left bedridden and without means. Even the church folk got tired of the case. She went into the workhouse, died, and so came here. All this as likely as not. Think of those long years of suffering! From the last dazzling “Oh! hang it all, Lennard!” cried Mahoney; “you are preaching like a teetotal orator. Confound it, we can’t stand the whole seven of ’em. That’s enough! Why, what could the old parson want more than to give a medical school like ours his ‘body of divinity’? He has preached a better sermon in the hands of Professor Sturge than he ever did at church, and his illustrations are much more telling, I dare say; and he makes no reservations now. I can imagine nothing more honourable than to devote one’s body to a dissecting-room out of mere gratitude to a science that has helped us in life. But this is a dismal strain we are in. Give us your song, Williams; dear old Albert Smith’s ‘Student’s Alphabet.’” Williams laid aside his pipe, and took a pull at the tankard of ale on the mantel board, and began:— THE STUDENT’S ALPHABET. Oh, A was an Artery, filled with injection; And B was a Brick, never caught at dissection. C were some Chemicals—Lithium and Borax; And D was the Diaphragm, flooring the thorax. Chorus. Fol de rol lol, Fol de rol lay, Fol de rol, tol de rol, tol de rol lay. E was an Embryo in a glass case; And F a Foramen that pierced the skull’s base. And H means the Half-and-half drunk at the schools. Fol de rol lol, etc. I was some Iodine, made of sea-weed; J was a Jolly Cock, not used to read. K was some Kreosote, much over-rated; And L were the Lies which about it were stated. Fol de rol lol, etc. M was a Muscle—cold, flabby, and red; And N was a Nerve, like a bit of white thread. O was some Opium a fool chose to take; And P were the Pins used to keep him awake. Fol de rol lol, etc. Q were the Quacks, who cure stammer and squint; R was a Raw from a burn, wrapped in lint. S was a Scalpel, to eat bread and cheese; And T was a Tourniquet, vessels to squeeze. Fol de rol lol, etc. U was the Unciform bone of the wrist; V was the Vein which a blunt lancet missed. W was Wax, from a syringe that flowed; X was the ’Xaminers, who may be blowed! Fol de rol lol, etc. Y stands for You all, with best wishes sincere; And Z for the Zanies who never touch beer. So we’ve got to the end, not forgetting a letter; And those who don’t like it may grind up a better. Fol de rol lol, etc. One of the party, a Mr. Randall, a second year’s man, was very groggy, and it was rather unlucky that he was called out to a maternity case in the midst of all this enjoyment. Not that he took it to heart much, indeed he went with alacrity. He had to prove attendance on fifty cases before he could compete for the Obstetric prize, and as this would bring his Under the Ægis of this protection there is very little that a student cannot do with a live or a dead human subject. Nice for the subject, especially if a live one! The interesting object of Mr. Randall’s attendance on the evening in question recovered her health, and ultimately died a natural death. After Randall had started, Dobbs was called upon to tell a story. He was good at this sort of thing; had written several capital tales for the press, and was generally suspected of being engaged upon a medical novel. “Well, lads,” said he, after mixing himself a whisky and soda, “I will tell you a true story to-night. I don’t think any of you know it, save perhaps one or two. I don’t always feel in the vein for telling it, but to-night I do. So here goes. “It was one day towards the end of November, four years “Why didn’t you burn the door?” asked Elsworth. “They always did that in Dumas’ tales.” “How could he when it’s iron, you donkey? Shut up; it seems you never do any quiet dissections,” said a young house surgeon. “There was the body of a newly imported subject, that had just been got ready for use upstairs, lying in ghastly whiteness on a coffin lid in the middle of the place. I noticed that its right arm was attached to a rope and pulley in the ceiling, and had been left in that position when the beadle had injected his preservative fluid into the arteries. The weight which acted as counterpoise was lying on a heap of old rags on the edge of the table. I did not like the look of the raised arm; it seemed pointing at me in a nasty ghostly sort of way, and I pulled it down. Then exploring further, I came upon a great store of tow and old sacking, and with these I made up a tidy sort of bed on a wide shelf, and determined when bedtime came to try and get some sleep. I was downright mad when I thought of my jolly little fire at my diggings, and the kidneys and stout I had ordered for supper. I wasn’t in much of a humour for reading, and had nothing to read with me except my Gray’s Anatomy. I hadn’t light enough to dissect, or would have kept at it all night. I could hear the clock of St. Andrew’s tolling out the lazy hours—how long they seemed! At nine I couldn’t stand it any more, and lay down on my shelf, and covering myself with the sacks tried to go to sleep. It was “Was that the rough little terrier which followed Dr. Arnold in the Laboratory when he was starving? I have heard him laugh at the misplaced confidence of the brute,” said Elsworth. “The very animal,” replied the story-teller. “But, I say, you had no licence, you know!” said Wilks, a shy, curate-looking freshman, who belonged to several humanitarian societies, and thought all this very dreadful. The roar of laughter with which the delicious joke was received made poor Wilks blush to the roots of his hair, as one of the audience cried: “Licence be hanged! Do you think we care for the fanatics who impede our work? Let them show themselves at St. Bernard’s! Crowe has one, because it looks well to the public; but don’t you preach, Wilks, or you’ll do for yourself. Go on.” “Now when I was at work on the physiology part of the business, I never thought of the cruelty, but now it all came upon me horribly. My position was bad enough, but these “Rather creepy, I must say,” said little Murphy. “Well, I could not sleep any more after that, and lay a-meditating. After all, I thought, why shouldn’t I have been murdered and given up to science, as I had done with those wretched dogs in the next room? Did not the same Power frame their bodies as mine? Were not the processes Nature so lovingly and carefully carried on in their sensitive little frames just as beautiful and well adapted as those which went on in me? I repented, my lads, that night, and I have never spoken to Crowe since, and have done with that sort of work.” “Oh, I got through the night somehow—an end comes to everything sooner or later; but the scoundrelly porters were later than usual that morning before they opened the place. Jim, the sweeper, was in a beastly funk, and implored me not to tell anybody, because it was his place to look round the vaults before closing; but he says the fog had got into him, and the other porter had asked him to go and have some hot spiced ale with him, and he was anxious he should not change his mind.” It was getting late, and Mrs. Harper knocked at the door with “Time! gentlemen; time!” Of course she was asked in and invited to have a toothful. “As my spasms was just a-comin’ on, strange to say, gentlemen, as up the stairs I came, I don’t mind if I do. Just a thimbleful; no, Mr. Murphy! not a drop beyond the pretty part, and cold I’ll have it to-night. It does me most good when the liquor is strong. Here’s your very good ’ealth, gentlemen, and may you all have lots of practice when you’ve done with the ’orspital; and what’s more, lots of fees, and good ’uns.” “Well done, missus,” said all the men; “you could not have wished us anything better.” “And now, gentlemen, I thank you for your kindness, but shut up my house I must; so I hope you will pardon me if I ask you to clear out. Oh! lawks, Mr. Murphy; I ’opes to goodness the perlice won’t see this blessed board, nor these knockers and things. I chops up that there ‘Similar—attached Willa Residence’ to-morrow for the fires. I said you should have it for your party, but no more of it—not if I knows it. Now, gents! Good-night! good-night!” And she got rid of them, and they went rollicking home. |