roasted. We none of us ever changed the succession of the courses--or
made more or less of them--or altered the position of the fowls opposite
the mistress and the haunch opposite the master. My stomach used to
quail within me, in those times, when the tureen was taken off and
the inevitable gravy-soup smell renewed its daily acquaintance with my
nostrils, and warned me of the persistent eatable formalities that were
certain to follow. I suppose that honest people, who have known what it
is to get no dinner (being a Rogue, I have myself never wanted for one),
have gone through some very acute suffering under that privation. It may
be some consolation to them to know that, next to absolute starvation,
the same company-dinner, every day, is one of the hardest trials that
assail human endurance. I date my first serious determination to throw
over the medical profession at the earliest convenient opportunity,
from the second season's series of dinners at which my aspirations, as a
rising physician, unavoidably and regularly condemned me to be present.




CHAPTER II.

THE opportunity I wanted presented itself in a curious way, and led,
unexpectedly enough, to some rather important consequences.

I have already stated, among the other branches of human attainment
which I acquired at the public school, that I learned to draw
caricatures of the masters who were so obliging as to educate me. I
had a natural faculty for this useful department of art. I improved it
greatly by practice in secret after I left school, and I ended by making
it a source of profit and pocket money to me when I entered the medical