bank-notes, mourn over the husband you have lost among you--over the
Rogue who has broken the laws which, as the partner of a landed or
fund-holding woman, he might have helped to make on the benches of
the British Parliament! Oh! ye hearths and homes sung about in so
many songs--written about in so many books--shouted about in so many
speeches, with accompaniment of so much loud cheering: what a settler
on the hearth-rug; what a possessor of property; what a bringer-up of a
family, was snatched away from you, when the son of Dr. Softly was lost
to the profession of Quadrilles!

It ended in my resigning myself to the misfortune of being a doctor.

If I was a very good boy and took pains, and carefully mixed in the best
society, I might hope in the course of years to succeed to my father's
brougham, fashionably-situated house, and clumsy and expensive footman.
There was a prospect for a lad of spirit, with the blood of the early
Malkinshaws (who were Rogues of great capacity and distinction in the
feudal times) coursing adventurous through every vein! I look back on my
career, and when I remember the patience with which I accepted a medical
destiny, I appear to myself in the light of a hero. Nay, I even went
beyond the passive virtue of accepting my destiny--I actually studied, I
made the acquaintance of the skeleton, I was on friendly terms with the
muscular system, and the mysteries of Physiology dropped in on me in the
kindest manner whenever they had an evening to spare.

Even this was not the worst of it. I disliked the abstruse studies of my
new profession; but I absolutely hated the diurnal slavery of qualifying
myself, in a social point of view, for future success in it. My fond
medical parent insisted on introducing me to his whole connection. I
went round visiting in the neat brougham--with a stethoscope and medical