rses quite as much as they can do, you will
have an idea of the ground we cover.

The house, a large square brick one, standing in its own grounds, is
built on a small hill in an oasis of green fields. Beyond this, however,
on every side the veil of smoke hangs over the country, with the mine
pumps and the chimneys bristling out of it. It would be a dreadful place
for an idle man: but we are all so busy that we have hardly time to
think whether there's a view or not.

Day and night we are at work; and yet the three months have been very
pleasant ones to look back upon.

I'll give you an idea of what a day's work is like. We breakfast about
nine o'clock, and immediately afterwards the morning patients begin to
drop in. Many of them are very poor people, belonging to the colliery
clubs, the principle of which is, that the members pay a little over a
halfpenny a week all the year round, well or ill, in return for which
they get medicine and attendance free. "Not much of a catch for the
doctors," you would say, but it is astonishing what competition there
is among them to get the appointment. You see it is a certainty for
one thing, and it leads indirectly to other little extras. Besides, it
amounts up surprisingly. I have no doubt that Horton has five or six
hundred a year from his clubs alone. On the other hand, you can imagine
that club patients, since they pay the same in any case, don't let their
ailments go very far before they are round in the consulting room.

Well, then, by half-past nine we are in full blast. Horton is seeing
the better patients in the consulting room, I am interviewing the
poorer ones in the waiting room, and McCarthy, the Irishman, making up
prescriptions as hard as he can tear. By the club rules, patients are
bound to find their own bottles and corks.

They generally remember the bottle, but always forget the cork. "Ye must
pay a pinny or ilse put your forefinger in," says McCarthy. They have an
idea that all the strength of the medicine goes if the bottle is open,
so they trot off with their fingers stuck in the necks. They have the
most singular notions about medicines. "It's that strong that a spoon
will stand oop in't!" is one man's description. Above all, they love to
have two bottles, one with a solution of citric acid, and the other with
carbonate of soda. When the mixture begins to fizz, they realise that
there is indeed a science of medicine.

This sort of work, with vaccinations