OLD

THE COUNTRY DOCTOR.

LD Dr. Twogood I knew very well. He was the sort of man for everybody to know, who could. Fond of a story, attached to his few rows of well-used books, his parish of friends, and his steady, dock-tailed mare, I honestly believe no man ever took life, as life goes with us all, more humorously, comfortably, and contentedly than he. Like the minister, everybody knew him well, or, like the sign-post on Sundays, everybody consulted him. Rotund, red-faced, and ever disposed to be jolly, he was the sample for lean and Cassiuslike patients to copy after so far as they could. They needed but to have a good look at his happy face, to give the right turn to the whole list of their complaints. There might, indeed, have been some miraculous element in it all, like the touching of garment hems in olden times, or the going down into healing pools to wash.

I think there are few men so placed in the

social arrangement, and especially i the country neighborhood, that their can be made as general and genial a the regular physician. The family the one privileged visitor. He has t our doors and hearts. He dispense deal more healing by his manner tha less intelligible prescriptions. Wha his oracular lips often works better than what he writes down in abl Latin. The country physician, in th of things, is drawn by very close and o tial relations to his patients. He has to do peculiarly his own. He is empl a "family man." His sympathies are or less domestic, and all his aims ce appear to do so, in Home.

Scott describes one of these human b tors in the "Chronicles of the Canonga these words: "There is no creature in

land that works harder, and is more requited than the country doctor, unles haps it may be his horse. Yet the horse i indeed must be, hardy, active, and inde ble, in spite of a rough coat and indifferen dition; and so you will often find in his m under a blunt exterior, professional skil enthusiasm, intelligence, humanity, co and science."

While practising at his profession, he carries on a farm as well; generally showing as fine fruits and as large vegetables as any other cultivator in town, and keeping the most liberal share of each to bestow upon his friend, the minister, along in the sunny days of autumn. A better garden than Dr. Twogood kept and dressed, I think I never knew nor saw. There were no vegetables, whether common or rare, which he had not industriously laid under tribute for family service, through the instrumentality of his little patch of land. He hoed and grubbed in it by the hour, all by himself, — planting his beans, sowing his radishes and peas, pulling or scraping the weeds, picking bugs most patiently from his cucumber vines, and stirring the soil where it needed mellowing.

I never left off envying him the pleasure he took among his apple-trees, in that pretty orchard which made regular avenues across the slope back of his house, and thence down into the meadows. In that spot he appeared entirely happy. It was to me a convincing illustration of what I had an intuitive knowledge of before, that our simplest and least costly pleasures are worth most to us, and that the memory of them abides longest. The Doctor

looked to me, in that particular spot, lord of the land; or, perhaps, like so poet among his trees, familiarizing with the bent of their disposition, one, nodding to them whenever they to nod, passing his hands in a friend up and down their stems, — pulling ov boughs toward him,— and plunging h into the dense banks of green with whi made the landscape beautiful. The who suggested to me the picture of the true seemed so simple, so sweet, and so whol

If a man should run in to ask the Do

come over and see his wife just as quick could, or to take in hand one of his ch who had been stuffing with under-ripe ch or currants, or apples, he would very find him if at all-in a lazy posture great office-chair, feet piled upon the or braced against the jamb, hands folded an air of permanency across his abdo and countenance prepared either to dissol smiles or break up in a horse-laugh, just as cumstances might seem to direct. That b a room, which he styled his " office," had se deal of medicinal experience in its day. atmosphere was heavy with the fragrance boluses and gallipots. Plasters and surg

ingenuities lay rather promiscuously around. The windows were heavy with dust and curtained with cobwebs; and as for the floor, it was worn bare of carpet and paint with the shuffle and tread of heavily booted feet.

We all went in there one Sunday afternoon, just after tea. The old Doctor did n't happen to be in the room at the moment, but he soon came roystering along in his jolly manner from another room, where he said his wife had prevailed on him to go through the form of taking tea.

"And now, come," said he; "I believe we've got a little something or another left on the table; and if we have n't, I'm certain there's something in the cupboard! So come

come right along; and just see for yourselves how much healthier 't is to live in a doctor's house than in some others! 99

He enjoyed as sound digestion as a man could; hence, of course, his remarkable and uninterrupted flow of spirits. An observant old physician of Boston once said, that he could tell almost any man's creed by the state of his liver. Had it been proposed to apply this test to Dr. Twogood, it would have been found that a more orthodox, sound-at-heart, and thoroughly religious man nowhere enjoyed