LOVE AND LOVERS.

“No task is harder than that of writing to the ideas of another.”—Johnson.

An old lady once said, “I’ve hearn say that doctors either are, or are not, great experts in love affairs; I’ve forgotten which.” Just so!

“I would not be a doctor’s wife for the world,” I have heard many a lady affirm. True; for few doctors have had the misfortune (or folly) to select a jealous woman for a life companion.

Socrates, the great philosopher, and physician of the mind, seems to have had the ugliest tempered woman in the world, whose very name, Xantippe, has passed into a proverb for a scolding wife; yet she was not jealous of her spouse, but was said to have sincerely loved him; and he bore her outbursts of temper only as a great philosopher could, which seemed not to have disturbed the equanimity of his living nor the humor of his dying.

“Crito,”—these were his last words,—“Crito, forget not the cock that I promised to Esculapius!”

Alas! an affecting satire on philosophy and physic.

MY FIRST LOVE.

No; we find no cases to record of the jealousies of physicians, or their wives. All the jealousies of the former are spent on their professional brethren.

It is a philosophical fact that physicians, of all men, seldom are involved in disgrace, quarrels, or litigations on account of love affairs. Yet they have affections, like other men, and above all men know how to appreciate affection and virtue in woman.

First Love—Blasted Hopes.

I know of a little episode in the early life of a doctor, whose name modesty forbids me to mention. Let me briefly state it in the first person.

Ah, friend, if you and I should meet
Beneath the boughs of the bending lime,
And you in the same low voice repeat
The tender words of the old love-rhyme,
It could not bring back the same old time—
No, never.

I was young when I first fell in love,—not above six years of age; but love is without reason, blind to age. The object of my first affection was my school-mischief, as I then called her, who was about twenty. The disparagement of years never entered my innocent noddle. I used to start for school a half hour before nine, and stop on the way at the squire’s house, where Miss —— boarded. O, with what joy I always met her! In summer she gave me roses from the beautiful great white rose-bushes in the squire’s front yard; in autumn and winter, splendid red and green apples, from the orchard and cellar, and candy and kisses at all times. So I fell desperately in love with her.

I was greatly shocked, and not a little piqued, when one day she, in cold blood, bade me good by, and went away with a tall man, with shocking red whiskers. That is all I remember about him. I, however, mourned her loss for years, although my appetite remained unimpaired—my parents said.

“Like a still serpent, basking in the sun,
With subtle eyes, and back of russet gold,
Her gentle tones and quiet sweetness won
A coil upon her victims: fold on fold
She wove around them with her graceful wiles,
Till, serpent-like, she stung amid her smiles.”

The next time I saw her was about ten years afterwards. O, with what pleasant anticipations I hastened to her house! I remembered her every look—her fair, intelligent face; her wavy black hair; her heavenly dark-blue eyes. O, I should know her anywhere! Her I never could forget.

TEN YEARS LATER.

With these thoughts I confidently knocked at the door. “Is Miss —— at home?” I inquired of the—servant, I supposed, who opened the door. Just then three or four dirty-looking little children ran screaming after the woman, calling out, “Marm, marm!”“Hush, children, hush!” said the female, and, turning again to me, said,—

“Whom did you inquire for?” pushing back one of the red-headed urchins.

“Miss Mary ——, ma’am,” I answered. “She once lived at Blue Hill.”

She gave a sickly-looking smile. She looked sick before; her cheeks all fallen in; her skimmed-milk colored eyes had a weary, anxious expression; and her thin, bony hands, resting on the door-latch, looked like a consumptive’s, as she said,—

“When did you know her?”

“O, but a few years ago, ma’am. Is she here? Does she live in this house?” I eagerly inquired.

“Well,” she replied, with another more sepulchral smile,

“I was once Miss Mary ——. I married Mr. —— ——, over ten years ago. My baby, here,”—presenting the second in size of the children to my view, a reddish-brown haired girl, quite unlike any one I had ever seen before, and wiping its nose with her calico apron,—“she is named for me, Mary ——. Won’t you come in, sir?”

No, I thought I would not stop. I didn’t stop till I reached the hotel, where I had begged the stage-driver to wait for me but a half hour before, while I called upon the lovely Miss Mary ——.

“O, sunny dreams of childhood,
How soon they pass away!
Like flowers within the wild wood,
They perish and decay.”

A handy Doctor.

A young physician was supposed to be “keepin’ company” with a young lady. The matronly friend of the latter, having praised the young man from all points of view, returned one day from the death-bed of a friend, at which the physician had been present. She eulogized the living fully as much as the dead man, and finally turning to the girl, as if she had reached the ne plus ultra of enthusiasm, she said, “Jane, he’s the handsomest man I ever see fixin’ round a corpse.”

A Doctor’s Story.

The writer is acquainted with a young physician, who read medicine with an old doctor, named Gitchel, or Twichel, of Portland, and commenced practice in his native village,—a great mistake for any practitioner to make,—and where he met with consequences natural to even a prophet, opposition and scandal. By some mistake, or, as his opponents charged, mal-practice, he lost a patient. Being, a few days later, in a shop in the next village, he was secretly informed that the “hounds of the law were after him—even at the next door, that very moment.” Terrified beyond necessity, he caught up his medicine chest, and, climbing out of the back window, fled to the woods. In the village, at home, he had courted a lovely young girl, with whom he had exchanged vows. She knew the talk that was going on respecting the young doctor, but she believed it not, or, believing, clung the firmer to her pledges.

FLIGHT OF THE DOCTOR.

“After night fell I left the woods, and took to the highway. To go home I was afraid. O, had I but braved the doctors, and defied the lawyers, all would have been well,” he told me afterwards. “But I had received such ill treatment, been scandalized so severely, that I was cowed to the earth. I knew not if my life, my Angie, had also turned against me, when the news was spread that I had tacitly admitted my crime by fleeing.

“I went to W., hundreds of miles away. I took a new name, and put out my shingle. I was at once patronized, and soon extensively; but I was morose and unhappy. I was offered a home and a wife. I had as good as a wife away in my far-off home; I was bound to her, and I loved her as I hated my own soul! I dared not write to her, nor go to her. ‘O, my God, what shall I do?’ I cried, in my misery. He did not hear me, and I came to believe that He was not!

“Thus a whole year wore away, and I had not heard from home. Finally, I determined to make an attempt to see my Angie. I had, after going to W., allowed my heavy beard to go uncropped, which I had never done at home. I wore no clothes that I brought away with me from home. I purchased a few knickknacks, put on a slouched hat, and appeared in my native village as a peddler. Unless my voice betrayed me, I had no fears of detection. To prevent this mishap I kept a silver coin in my mouth when talking.

“I had called at several houses, but could learn nothing of my betrothed, without fear of exciting suspicion by too close inquiries. I therefore, unable longer to stand the suspense, entered her father’s house. She and her mother only were at home. I could scarcely suppress my feelings as I beheld her, the idol of my heart. When I spoke, she started to her feet, and with staring countenance gazed fixedly upon me. Then she fell back into her chair.

FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS.

THE LOVER AS A PEDDLER.“My God, she did not know me.

“The mother noticed how pale the girl looked, and proposed to get her a drink of water from the porch.

“‘No, no, I am not faint.’

“‘Yes, yes,’ I articulated, with the coin in my mouth; ‘get her some water.’

“Away went the old lady, and, dropping my basket and spitting out the coin, I cried, ‘Angie, Angie, bless you, my darling,’ and fell kneeling at her feet.

“‘O, Charley, it is you,—the Lord be praised!—come at last.’

“I sprang to my feet. There was time to say no more. The mother returned and looked wistfully about.

“‘I thought I heard some one saying, “Charley, Charley,”’ she said, presenting the water to Angie, who was now flushed and excited. I was searching for my coin.

“‘O, the water is warm. Mother, dear, do go to the well in the yard, and get some fresh; and look to see if there is anybody outside calling.’ And away went the old lady.

“‘Now, Charley, what brought you back? And why did you stay? And—’

“‘Wait, wait. Number nine boots brought me. I’ve come for you, Angie.’

“‘You will be arrested if you are seen here, I am afraid,’ she said.

“‘Then meet me to-night at —— Crossing, and fly with me.’

“I then told her how I had lived, how I had suffered, and how much I loved her; and she consented to marry me, and secretly go away with me. But the difficulty now lay in getting a lawful man to marry us. The license could be bought; I was certain of that. So I went away and obtained it. I next hired a horse and carriage, and paid for it in advance, to go twelve miles.

“‘Aren’t you Charley ——?’ asked the stable man, eying me sharply, as I was about to drive away to get Angie, that night.

“‘Take this,’—and I gave him a gold piece,—‘and ask no questions, nor answer any, till you see your horse and carriage safely back,’ was my reply.

“As we drove out of the village, I heard wagon wheels far behind us. Reaching the woods, I drove into a wood road, and the ‘hounds of the —— doctors’ rode fiercely past. Angie trembled for my safety. I reached a cross road. The moon shone quite brightly, and, jumping from the buggy, I soon found, by the fresh track, which road they had taken. I took a different. So I reached a train that night, and rode till morning; arrived at W. the next, and was married.”

It was at W. that I found him first. He was smart. He had a good memory. He was a handsome man, full six feet in his stockings. In all, his address was not excelled by any physician with whom I have ever met. He is now an excellent physician and surgeon, in a large city, in good practice. When he returned on a visit to his native village, as he did last year, the affair had blown over; for after a man is honored abroad, he may become so at home,—seldom before. I wish him happiness and prosperity.

“There is no greater rogue than he who marries only for money; no greater fool than he who marries only for love. I could marry any lady I like, if I would only take the trouble,” Dr. Macilvain heard an old fellow say. Of course, nobody but a conceited old bachelor would have said that, who needs a woman to just take some of the self-conceit out of him.

English Doctors as Beaus.

Some of the old English doctors were gay fellows amongst the ladies, according to the best authorities. Nevertheless, few men have arrived at eminence in the medical profession who were known to be afflicted with an overplus of romantic or sentimental qualities in their composition.It may be interesting, particularly to ladies, to know that the majority of those physicians who have arrived at the dignity of knighthood owe their elevation rather to the smiles of love than the rewards of professional efforts. “Considering the opportunities that medical men have for pressing a suit in love, and the many temptations to gentle emotion that they experience in the aspect of female suffering, and the confiding gratitude of their fair patients, it is to be wondered at that only one medical duke is to be found in the annals of the peerage.” But the physician usually has quite sufficient self-control and honor about him, not only to keep his own tender sensibilities in subjection, but often to check those of his grateful and emotional female patient.

Thackeray has said that “girls of rank make love in the nursery, and practise the arts of coquetry upon the page boy who brings up the coals and kindlings.”

In this connection Mr. Jeaffreson, whose narratives have the virtue of being true as well as interesting, says, “I could point to a fair matron who now enjoys rank and wealth among the highest, who not only aimed tender glances, and sighed amorously upon a young, waxen-faced, blue-eyed apothecary, but even went so far as to write him a letter proposing an elopement, and other merry arrangements, in which a ‘carriage and four,’ to speed them over the country, bore a conspicuous part.”

The “silly maiden” had, like Dinah, a “fortune in silver and gold,” of about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and her tall, blue-eyed Adonis, to whom she made this almost resistless proposal, was twice her age. But he was a gentleman of honor, and, being in the confidence of the family, he generously, without divulging the mad proposition of the fair young lady, induced the father to take her to the continent, for a twelvemonth’s change of air and scenery.

“What a cold-blooded wretch!” will some fair reader exclaim.“What a fool he was, to be sure!” says the bachelor fortune-seeker.

Well, she didn’t die for her first unrequited love, but married a “very great man,” and became the mother of several children. And this is the way the fair heroine of this little story avenged herself upon this “Joseph amongst doctors.”

Very recently she manifested her good will to the man who had offered her what is generally regarded as the greatest insult a woman can experience, by procuring a commission in the army for his eldest son.

It is interesting to note the various qualities which have attracted the attention, or love, of different sons of Æsculapius to female beauties. Sometimes it has been her hair, the “pride of a woman,” that was the point of attraction, as it was with Dr. Mead, “whose highest delight was to comb the luxuriant tresses of the lady on whom he lavished his affections;” or the “eyes of heavenly blue,” like the lady love’s of Dr. Elliot, senior; or the tiny footprint in the sand, like that which first attracted Dr. Robert Ames to the woman of his choice. What the point of attraction was in the man is not easily ascertained.

A gay and dangerous beau among the “high ladies” was Dr. Hugh Smithson, the father of James Smithson (his illegitimate son), the founder of the “Smithsonian Institution” at Washington. Sir Hugh’s forte lay in his remarkably handsome person, said to be only second to Sir Astley Cooper in beauty of form and features. However, he had the address which secured to him one of the handsomest and proudest heiresses of England, and this is how he accomplished it.

He was but the grandson of a Yorkshire baronet, “with no prospects,” and was apprenticed to an apothecary, and for a long time paid court to mortar and pestle at Hutton Garden. The story runs, that the handsome doctor had been mittened by a “belle of private rank and modest wealth,” and that the only child and heiress of Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and an acquaintance of Sir Hugh’s, heard of his rejection, when she publicly observed that “the beauty who had disdained such a man was guilty of a folly that no other woman in England would have been.”

Sir Hugh would have been unwise not to have taken this broad hint, and he did what none of the heiress’s suitors, even of high rank, had yet aspired to,—proposed, and was accepted. Sixteen years later he was created Duke of Northumberland, and could well afford to laugh in his sleeve at the proposition that “his coronet should be surrounded with senna leaves, instead of strawberry,” since he had reached a rank that no other M. D. had previously done, and possessed the “loveliest woman in England,” and a great fortune, to boot.

Lord Glenbervie, who from the druggist’s counter reached the peerage, was taunted by Sheridan with his plebeian origin, from which a patrician wife had redeemed him, in the following amusing verse:—

“Glenbervie, Glenbervie!
What’s good for the scurvy?
But why is the doctor forgot?
In his arms he should quarter
A pestle and mortar,
For his crest an immense gallipot.”

Sir John Elliot was another handsome doctor of that period, who, notwithstanding his being disliked by King George, could, with small effort and large impudence, “capture the hearts of half the prettiest women amongst the king’s subjects, and then shrug his shoulders with chagrin at his success.” “One lady, the daughter of a nobleman, ignorant that he was otherwise occupied, made him an offer, and on learning, to her surprise and mortification, that he was already married, vowed she would not rest till she had assassinated his wife.”Dr. Arbuthnot, whose courtly address, sparkling wit, ready flow of language, innate cordiality, and polished manners made him a great favorite about London, was one of the finest looking gentlemen of his time. The doctor was contemporary with Dean Swift, with whom he used to enjoy flirtations with the queen’s maids of honor about St. James.

“Arm in arm with the dean, he used to peer about St. James, jesting, laughing, causing matronly dowagers to smile at ‘that dear Mr. Dean,’ and young girls, out for their first season at court, green and unsophisticated, to blush with annoyance at his coarse, shameless badinage,—bowing to this great man, from whom he hoped for countenance; staring insolently at that one, from whom he expected nothing; quoting Martial to the prelate, who could not understand Latin; whispering French to a youthful diplomatist, who knew no tongue but English; and continually angling for the bishopric, which he never got.”

From flattering court beauties, Arbuthnot became flatterer to the gouty, hypochondriacal old queen. But wine and women made sad havoc with poor Arbuthnot, who died in very straitened circumstances.

Dr. Mead, before mentioned, was twice married. He was fifty-one years old when married the second time, to a baronet’s daughter. Fortunate beyond fortunate men, he had the great mis-fortune of outliving his usefulness. His sight failed, and his powers underwent that gradual decay which is the saddest of all possible conclusions to a vigorous and dignified existence. Even his valets domineered over him. Long before this his second childhood, he excited the ridicule of the town by his vanity and absurd pretensions as a “lady-killer.”

“The extravagances of his amorous senility were not only whispered about, but some contemptible fellow seized upon the unpleasant rumors, and published them in a scandalous novelette, wherein the doctor was represented as a ‘Cornuter of seventy-five,’ when, to please the damsel who ‘warmed his aged heart,’—she was a blacksmith’s daughter,—the doctor, long past threescore and ten, went to Paris, and learned to dance.”

AN AGED PUPIL.

Dr. Richard Mead died aged eighty-one. The sale of his library, pictures, and statues brought the heirs eighty thousand dollars. His other effects amounted to one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

Another Dr. Mead, uncle to the above, lived to the age of one hundred and forty-nine years. Both of these physicians were remarkable for their kindness and liberality. The latter left five pounds a year to the poor, to continue forever.

Beauty not Potent with Ladies.

A handsome person is not alone requisite to win the affections of a sensible lady. Radcliffe, who was as great a humbug in affairs matrimonial as in all other matters, was represented as being “handsome and imposing in person;” but his overbearing manner, and his coarse flings at the softer sex, made him anything but a favorite with the ladies. While he professed to be a misogynist, he made several unsuccessful attempts, particularly late in life, to commit himself to matrimony.

A lady, with “a singing noise in her head,” asked what she should do for it. “Curl your hair at night with a ballad,” was the coarse reply.

Once, when sitting over a bottle of wine at a public house, Queen Anne sent her servant for Dr. Radcliffe to hasten to her Royal Highness, who was taken suddenly ill with what was vulgarly called “the blue devils,” to which gormandizers are subject, but more properly termed indigestion. “When the wine is in, the wits are out,” was readily demonstrated in this case; for, on a second messenger arriving from the queen for her physician to make all haste, Radcliffe banged his fist down on the board, at which other physicians also sat, and exclaimed,—

“Go tell her Royal Highness that she has nothing but the vapors.”

When, on the following morning, the process being reversed,—the “wine was out, and wits were in”—the doctor presented himself, with pomp and a show of dignity, at St. James’, judge of his mortification, when the chamberlain stopped him in the anteroom, and informed him that he was already succeeded by Dr. Gibbons.

The queen never forgave him for saying she had the “vapors.” Radcliffe never forgave Dr. Gibbons for superseding him. “Nurse Gibbons,” he would bitterly exclaim, “is only fit to look after nervous women, who only fancy sickness.”When the doctor was forty-three years of age, he made love to a lady of half his years, and followed with an offer of marriage, which was accepted. As the fact became public, the doctor was warmly congratulated upon his good fortune, for the lady was not only young, but was a beauty, and an heiress to seventy-five thousand dollars.

The wedding day was set, which was to crown Radcliffe’s happiness, when a little drawback arose, which was not previously mentioned in the bills. The peculiar condition of the beauty’s health rendered it expedient that, instead of the doctor, she should marry her father’s book-keeper.

The doctor’s acetous temper towards the fair sex was not lessened by this mishap, nor were the ladies backward in giving him an occasional reminder of the fact. Nevertheless, unlike the burnt child, that avoided the fire, Radcliffe, sixteen years afterwards, made a second conspicuous throw of the dice. He was then about sixty. He came out with a new and elegant equipage, employed the most fashionable tailors, hatters, and wig-makers, “who arrayed him in the newest modes of foppery, which threw all London into fits of laughter, while he paid his addresses, with the greatest possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm,—youth, beauty, and wealth,—except a tenderness for her aged suitor.

“Behold, love has taken the place of avarice [the affair was thus aired in a public print]; “or, rather, is become avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis! The anxious, mean cares of a usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. ‘Behold,’ says the aged Æsculapian, ‘I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O Fate, for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but as it adorns the hat, person, and laces of the dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia! That is all I implore.’

“O Wealth, how impotent art thou, and how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee for the love of what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!”

Although Radcliffe denied his own sisters during his life, “lest they should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his pockets,” some stories of his benevolence are told, one of which is, that finding one Dr. James Drake, when “each had done the utmost to injure the other,” broken down and in distressed circumstances, he sent by a lady fifty guineas to his unfortunate enemy, saying,—

“Let him by no means learn who sent it. He is a gentleman who has often done his best to hurt me, and would by no means accept a benefit from one whom he had striven to make an enemy.”

A Stable-boy, Poet, and Doctor.

Poor George Crabbe, the poet-doctor-apothecary, had a very hard time in this cold, unappreciative world, until Love smiled upon his unhappy lot. He was born in the old sea-side town of Aldoborough, where his father was salt inspector,—not an over-lucrative office in those days. George was the eldest of a numerous family.

From the common school he went to apprenticeship with a rough old country doctor, who lodged him with the stable-boy. From this indignity he was, however, soon released, and went to live with a kind gentleman, a surgeon of Woodbridge. Here he began to write poetry. Here, also, he became acquainted with a young surgeon, named Leavett, who introduced Crabbe to a lovely young lady, with whom he fell desperately in love.

This inestimable young lady resided at Parham Lodge with her uncle, John Tovell, yeoman, and her name was Sarah Elmy. Mr. Tovell possessed an estate worth four thousand dollars per annum, and, without assuming any “airs,” was a first-class “yeoman” of that period—“one that already began to be styled, by courtesy, an esquire.”

“On Crabbe’s first introduction to Parham Lodge, he was received with cordiality; but when it became known that he had fallen in love with the squire’s niece, it was only natural that his presumption should at first meet with the disapproval of Mrs. Tovell and the squire.”

BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE CRABBE.

After closing his term of apprenticeship with Dr. Page, young Crabbe returned to his native village, where he furnished a little shop with “a pound’s worth of drugs,” and an array of empty bottles, and set himself up as an apothecary. His few patients were only amongst the poorer class of the town. Although he had plighted troth with the lovely Sarah at Parham Lodge, with starvation staring him in the face at Aldoborough, and the opposition of the lady’s family at the Lodge, there was little prospect of bettering his condition in life. The temporary military appointments which he received brought him no nearer his desired object. The lady remained true to her vows; and long after his friend Leavett had quitted the shores of time, and his new and true friend Burke had extended to the promising author his patronage, she received the reward for her faithful waiting.

The union of Crabbe with Miss Elmy conferred eventually upon the poet, doctor, and apothecary, the possession of the estate of “yeoman” Tovell—Parham Lodge. A maiden sister of the squire’s, dying, left him a considerable sum of money. The loving, waiting Sarah proved a faithful, though some might say a somewhat domineering, wife, as the following quotation intimates:—

“I can screw Crabbe up or down, just like an old fiddle,” this amiable woman was wont to say; and throughout her life she amply demonstrated the assertion.

“But her last will and testament was a handsome apology for all her past little tiffs.”

The Right Man.

A curious story is told, and vouched for, respecting the manner in which Dr. and Rev. Thomas Dawson obtained a rich and pious wife. This gentleman combined the two professions of preacher and doctor. If, during divine services, he was called upon to prescribe for an invalid, he wound up his sermon, requested his audience to pray for the sick, and repaired forthwith to administer to the body. I presume the congregation to whom the reasonable request was made did not take it in the same light as did an “M. D.” of whom we heard, who made a point to be called out of church every Sabbath.

Once the minister, who had a bit of humor in his manner, stopped on a certain occasion in his “thirdly,” and said, “Dr. B. is wanted to attend upon Mr. ——, and may the Lord have mercy upon him.”

The doctor was so enraged at this “insinuation” that he called upon the parson, and demanded an “apology to the congregation, before whom he felt he had been grossly slandered.”

The parson agreed to this proposal, and in the afternoon he arose and said,—

“As Dr. B. feels aggrieved at my remark of this morning, and demands an apology, I hereby offer the same; and as that was the first case, I trust it may be the last in which I am ever called upon in his behalf to supplicate divine intervention.”

But to return to Dr. Dawson. Amongst his patients was a Miss Mary Corbett, said to be one of the wealthiest and most pious of his flock, whom, on his calling upon her one day, he found bending in reverence over the Bible.

The doctor approached, and as she raised her eyes to his she held her finger upon the passage which occupied her immediate attention. The doctor bent down and read the words at which her finger pointed—“Thou art the man.”

The doctor was not slow to take the hint. Thus he obtained a pious wife, she a devout husband.—See “Book About Doctors.”

A great deal has been reported respecting the “off-hand” manner in which Abernethy “popped the question” to Miss Anne Threlfall. The fact of the case is given by Dr. Macilwain. The lady was visiting at a place where the doctor was attending a patient—of all places the best to learn the true merits of a lady. He was at once interested in her, and ere long there seemed a tacit understanding between them. “The doctor was shy and sensitive; which was the real Rubicon he felt a difficulty in passing; and this was the method he adopted: he wrote her a brief note, pleading professional occupation, etc., and requesting the lady to take a fortnight in which to consider her reply.” From these facts a great falsehood has oft been repeated how he “couldn’t afford time to make love,” etc., and that she must decide to marry him in a week, or not at all.

He was married to her January 9, 1800, and attended lectures the same day.

“POPPING THE QUESTION.”

“Many years after, I met him coming out of the hospital, and said,—

“‘You are looking very gay to-day, sir.’

“‘Yes,’ he replied, looking at his white vest and smart attire, ‘one of the girls was married this morning.’

“‘Indeed, sir? You should have given yourself a holiday on such an occasion, and not come down to lecture.’

“‘Nay,’ he replied, ‘egad, I came down to lecture the same day I was married myself.’”—Memoirs of Abernethy.