t pleasure to me, Dr. Frampton, to make your
acquaintance, more especially, sir, to find you surrounded by those
evidences of a prosperous practice which I had indeed inferred from
your genteel reticence and the quality of your notepaper. At the end
of a long journey, undertaken on the strength of that inference, it
is delightful to find my best hopes confirmed."

He shook me by the hand again very warmly. Taken aback by this
extraordinary address, I gasped once or twice, and even then could
find nothing better to say than that he must have found his journey
fatiguing.

"Fatiguing, perhaps, but not tiresome. To the philosophic mind,
Dr. Frampton, there should be no such thing as tedium, boredom,
_ennui_, and I trust that mine is philosophic. You were much in my
thoughts, sir, between the attacks of sea-sickness. By frequent
perusal I had committed your two epistles to memory, and while
silently rehearsing their well-turned sentences, in the words of
Dr. Samuel Johnson I pursued in imagination the pleasures of hope,
yet without listening to the whispers of credulity--for I was
prepared to find your flattering description fade upon a nearer
prospect. But I am reassured!"

Positively he shook hands for a third time. Confound the fellow!
I had merely hinted that my patients, or the most of them, were of
good social position, and had offered him board and lodging, with a
salary of forty pounds, rising five pounds annually.

"And by Heavens!" he exclaimed, spinning round on his heel at a sound
of hasty footsteps crossing the square, "here comes fresh
confirmation! A black manservant--and, as I live, in a gold-laced
hat! Of such things I have read in books, but how much livelier,
Dr. Frampton, is the ocular appeal of reality!"

It was, to be sure, Major Dignum's black valet Gumbo, and with a note
for me. The fellow's disordered dress and quick breathing spoke of
urgency, and I broke the seal at once, wondering the while what could
have befallen the Major, a retired and gouty West Indian whom I had
been visiting daily for three months at his apartments in the Grand
Pump Hotel. The missive ran:--

"My dear Dr. Frampton,--As a friend rather than a patient, I beg
you to come to me without delay! Pray ask no questions of
Gumbo, who knows nothing. You will need no spurring when I
tell you that though in no worse than my usual health, a few
hours may see me in eternity.