profound and original
pathologist was widely spread, and whose writings had formed no
unimportant part of my special studies. It was during a short holiday
excursion, from which he was about to return with renovated vigour, that
he had been thus stricken down. The patient so accidentally met with
became the founder of my professional fortunes. He conceived a warm
attachment for me,--perhaps the more affectionate because he was a
childless bachelor, and the nephew who would succeed to his wealth
evinced no desire to succeed to the toils by which the wealth had been
acquired. Thus, having an heir for the one, he had long looked about for
an heir to the other, and now resolved on finding that heir in me.
So when we parted Dr. Faber made me promise to correspond with him
regularly, and it was not long before he disclosed by letter the
plans he had formed in my favour. He said that he was growing old;
his practice was beyond his strength; he needed a partner; he was not
disposed to put up to sale the health of patients whom he had learned to
regard as his children: money was no object to him, but it was an object
close at his heart that the humanity he had served, and the reputation
he had acquired, should suffer no loss in his choice of a successor. In
fine, he proposed that I should at once come to L---- as his partner,
with the view of succeeding to his entire practice at the end of two
years, when it was his intention to retire.

The opening into fortune thus afforded to me was one that rarely
presents itself to a young man entering upon an overcrowded profession;
and to an aspirant less allured by the desire of fortune than the hope
of distinction, the fame of the physician who thus generously offered
to me the inestimable benefits of his long experience and his cordial
introduction was in itself an assurance that a metropolitan practice is
not essential to a national renown.

I went, then, to L----, and before the two years of my partnership had
expired, my success justified my kind friend's selection, and far more
than realized my own expectations. I was fortunate in effecting
some notable cures in the earliest cases submitted to me, and it is
everything in the career of a physician when good luck wins betimes for
him that confidence which patients rarely accord except to lengthened
experience. To the rapid facility with which my way was made, some
circumstances apart from professional skill probably contributed. I w