market. It was a _corner_ house, but not in a _corner_. On each
side of the shop were two gin establishments, and next to them were two
public-houses and then two eating-houses, frequented by graziers,
butchers, and drovers. Did the men drink so much as to quarrel in their
cups, who was so handy to plaster up the broken heads as Mr Cophagus?
Did a fat grazier eat himself into an apoplexy, how very convenient was
the ready lancet of Mr Cophagus. Did a bull gore a man, Mr Cophagus
appeared with his diachylon and lint. Did an ox frighten a lady, it was
in the back parlour of Mr Cophagus that she was recovered from her
syncope. Market-days were a sure market to my master; and if an
overdriven beast knocked down others, it only helped to set him on his
legs. Our window suffered occasionally; but whether it were broken
heads, or broken limbs, or broken windows, they were well paid for.
Everyone suffered but Mr Phineas Cophagus, who never suffered a patient
to escape him. The shop had the usual allowance of green, yellow, and
blue bottles; and in hot weather, from our vicinity, we were visited by
no small proportion of bluebottle flies. We had a white horse in one
window, and a brown horse in the other, to announce to the drovers that
we supplied horse-medicines. And we had all the patent medicines in the
known world, even to the "all-sufficient medicine for mankind" of Mr
Enouy; having which, I wondered, on my first arrival, why we troubled
ourselves about any others. The shop was large, and at the back part
there was a most capacious iron mortar, with a pestle to correspond.
The first floor was tenanted by Mr Cophagus, who was a bachelor; the
second floor was let; the others were appropriated to the housekeeper,
and to those who formed the establishment. In this well-situated
tenement, Mr Cophagus got on swimmingly. I will, therefore, for the
present, sink the shop, that my master may rise in the estimation of the
reader, when I describe his person and his qualifications.

Mr Phineas Cophagus might have been about forty-five years of age when
I first had the honour of an introduction to him in the receiving-room
of the Foundling Hospital. He was of the middle height, his face was
thin, his nose very much hooked, his eyes small and peering, with a
good-humoured twinkle in them, his mouth large, and drawn down at one
corner. He was stout in his body, and carried a considerable
protuberance before him, which he w