estimate that, out of every half-dozen people who pass, six will fall
down, four cut their faces more or less arterially, and two contuse their
foreheads. I, you may imagine, shall wait at home all the evening for the
crippled ones, and Jack is to go halves in what I get for plastering them
up. We may be so lucky as to procure a case of concussion--who knows? Jack
is a real friend: he cannot be of much use to me in the way of
recommendation, because the people here think he is a little wild; but as
far as seriously injuring the parishioners goes, he declares he will lose
no chance. He says he knows some gipsies on the common who have got
scarlet-fever in their tent; and he is going to give them half-a-crown if
they can bring it into the village, to be paid upon the breaking out of
the first undoubted case. This will fag the Union doctor to death, who is
my chief opponent, and I shall come in for some of the private patients.

My surgery is not very well stocked at present, but I shall write to
Ansell and Hawke after Christmas. I have got a pickle-bottle full of
liquorice-powder, which has brought me in a good deal already, and
assisted to perform several wonderful cures. I administer it in powders,
two drachms in six, to be taken morning, noon, and night; and it appears
to be a valuable medicine for young practitioners, as you may give a large
dose, without producing any very serious effects. Somebody was insane
enough to send to me the other night for a pill and draught; and if Jack
Randall had not been there, I should have been regularly stumped, having
nothing but Epsom salts. He cut a glorious calomel pill out of pipeclay,
and then we concocted a black-draught of salts and bottled stout, with a
little patent boot-polish. Next day, the patient finding himself worse,
sent for me, and I am trying the exhibition of linseed-meal and rose-pink
in small doses, under which treatment he is gradually recovering. It has
since struck me that a minute portion of sulphuric acid enters into the
composition of the polish, possibly causing the indisposition which he