rotocol as interminable as unintelligible: and
the look of solemn sagacity with which I poured out the contents of one
vial into the other, would have well become the king's physician, when
he watched the "lord's anointed" in _articulo mortis_.

As I followed up my saturnine avocation, I generally had an open book on
the counter beside me; not a marble-covered dirty volume, from the
Minerva press, or a half-bound, half-guinea's worth of fashionable
trash, but a good, honest, heavy-looking, wisdom-implying book, horribly
stuffed with epithet of drug; a book in which Latin words were
redundant, and here and there were to be observed the crabbed characters
of Greek. Altogether, with my book and my look, I cut such a truly
medical appearance, that even the most guarded would not have hesitated
to allow me the sole conduct of a whitlow, from inflammation to
suppuration, and from suppuration to cure, or have refused to have
confided to me the entire suppression of a gumboil. Such were my
personal qualifications at the time that I was raised to the important
office of dispenser of, I may say, life and death.

It will not surprise the reader when I tell him that I was much noticed
by those who came to consult, or talk with, Mr Cophagus. "A very fine
looking lad that, Mr Cophagus," an acquaintance would say. "Where did
you get him--who is his father?"

"Father!" Mr Cophagus would reply, when they had gained the
back parlour, but I could overhear him, "father, um--can't
tell--love--concealment--child born--foundling hospital--put out--and so
on."

This was constantly occurring, and the constant occurrence made me
often reflect upon my condition, which otherwise I might, from the happy
and even tenor of my life, have forgotten. When I retired to my bed I
would revolve in my mind all that I had gained from the governors of the
hospital relative to myself.--The paper found in the basket had been
given to me. I was born in wedlock--at least, so said that paper. The
sum left with me also proved that my parents could not, at my birth,
have been paupers. The very peculiar circumstances attending my case,
only made me more anxious to know my parentage. I was now old enough to
be aware of the value of birth, and I was also just entering the age of
romance, and many were the strange and absurd reveries in which I
indulged. At one time I would cherish the idea that I was of a noble, if
not princely birth, and frame reasons for concealme