despised."

Major Selby was a well-known and popular man, whose sudden death had
excited much sympathy and local interest, which were intensified when
the circumstances connected with it became public property.

On the following day the leading city paper published a report of the
results of the _post-mortem_, which doubtless had been furnished by the
relatives, and with it an editorial note.

In this paragraph I was spoken of in very complimentary terms; my
medical distinctions were alluded to, and the confident belief was
expressed that Dunchester would not be slow to avail itself of my skill
and talent. Sir John Bell was not so lightly handled. His gross error of
treatment in the case of the deceased was, it is true, slurred over, but
some sarcastic and disparaging remarks were aimed at him under cover of
comparison between the old and the new school of medical practitioners.

CHAPTER IV

STEPHEN STRONG GOES BAIL

Great are the uses of advertisement! When I went into my consulting-room
after breakfast that day I found three patients waiting to see me, one
of them a member of a leading family in the city.

Here was the beginning of my success. Whatever time may remain to
me, to-day in a sense my life is finished. I am a broken-hearted and
discomfited man, with little more to fear and nothing to hope. Therefore
I may be believed when I say that in these pages I set down the truth
and nothing but the truth, not attempting to palliate my conduct where
it has been wrong, nor to praise myself even when praise may have been
due. Perhaps, then, it will not be counted conceit when I write that
in my best days I was really a master of my trade. To my faculty for
diagnosis I have, I think, alluded; it amounted to a gift--a touch
or two of my fingers would often tell me what other doctors could
not discover by prolonged examination. To this I added a considerable
mastery of the details of my profession, and a sympathetic insight into
character, which enabled me to apply my knowledge to the best advantage.

When a patient came to me and told me that his symptoms were this
or that or the other, I began by studying the man and forming my own
conclusions as to his temperament, character, and probable past. It
was this method of mine of studying the individual as a whole and his
ailment as something springing from and natural to his physical and
spiritual entity that, so far as general principles can be applied to
part