hy persons who were yet far from convalescent.

Pratt's patients were profoundly uninteresting to Pilgrim: their very
diseases were despicable, and he would hardly have thought their bodies
worth dissecting. But of all Pratt's patients, Mr. Jerome was the one on
whom Mr. Pilgrim heaped the most unmitigated contempt. In spite of the
surgeon's wise tolerance, Dissent became odious to him in the person of
Mr. Jerome. Perhaps it was because that old gentleman, being rich, and
having very large yearly bills for medical attendance on himself and his
wife, nevertheless employed Pratt--neglected all the advantages of
'active treatment', and paid away his money without getting his system
lowered. On any other ground it is hard to explain a feeling of hostility
to Mr. Jerome, who was an excellent old gentleman, expressing a great
deal of goodwill towards his neighbours, not only in imperfect English,
but in loans of money to the ostensibly rich, and in sacks of potatoes to
the obviously poor.

Assuredly Milby had that salt of goodness which keeps the world together,
in greater abundance than was visible on the surface: innocent babes were
born there, sweetening their parents' hearts with simple joys; men and
women withering in disappointed worldliness, or bloated with sensual
ease, had better moments in which they pressed the hand of suffering with
sympathy, and were moved to deeds of neighbourly kindness. In church and
in chapel there were honest-hearted worshippers who strove to keep a
conscience void of offence; and even up the dimmest alleys you might have
found here and there a Wesleyan to whom Methodism was the vehicle of
peace on earth and goodwill to men. To a superficial glance, Milby was
nothing but dreary prose: a dingy town, surrounded by flat fields, lopped
elms, and sprawling manufacturing villages, which crept on and on with
their weaving-shops, till they threatened to graft themselves on the
town. But the sweet spring came to Milby notwithstanding: the elm-tops
were red with buds; the churchyard was starred with daisies; the lark
showered his love-music on the flat fields; the rainbows hung over the
dingy town, clothing the very roofs and chimneys in a strange
transfiguring beauty. And so it was with the human life there, which at
first seemed a dismal mixture of griping worldliness, vanity, ostrich
feathers, and the fumes of brandy: looking closer, you found some purity,
gentleness, and unselfishness, as you may