skin and complexion; my teeth were small, but were transparent, and I
had a very deep dimple in my chin. Like all embryo apothecaries, I
carried in my appearance, if not the look of wisdom, most certainly that
of self-sufficiency, which does equally well with the world in general.
My forehead was smooth, and very white, and my dark locks were combed
back systematically, and with a regularity that said, as plainly as hair
could do, "The owner of this does everything by prescription,
measurement, and rule." With my long fingers I folded up the little
packets, with an air as thoughtful and imposing as that of a minister
who has just presented a protocol as interminable as unintelligible: and
the look of solemn sagacity with which I poured out the contents of one
vial into the other, would have well become the king's physician, when
he watched the "lord's anointed" in _articulo mortis_.

As I followed up my saturnine avocation, I generally had an open book on
the counter beside me; not a marble-covered dirty volume, from the
Minerva press, or a half-bound, half-guinea's worth of fashionable
trash, but a good, honest, heavy-looking, wisdom-implying book, horribly
stuffed with epithet of drug; a book in which Latin words were
redundant, and here and there were to be observed the crabbed characters
of Greek. Altogether, with my book and my look, I cut such a truly
medical appearance, that even the most guarded would not have hesitated
to allow me the sole conduct of a whitlow, from inflammation to
suppuration, and from suppuration to cure, or have refused to have
confided to me the entire suppression of a gumboil. Such were my
personal qualifications at the time that I was raised to the important
office of dispenser of, I may say, life and death.

It will not surprise the reader when I tell him that I was much noticed
by those who came to consult, or talk with, Mr Cophagus. "A very fine