were in want of a doctor, would send for him; those who are my friends
will do so. What the Hill does, plenty of common people down there will
do also,--so that question is settled!" And it was settled.

Dr. Lloyd, thus taken by the hand, soon extended the range of his
visits beyond the Hill, which was not precisely a mountain of gold to
doctors, and shared with myself, though in a comparatively small degree,
the much more lucrative practice of Low Town.

I had no cause to grudge his success, nor did I. But to my theories
of medicine his diagnosis was shallow, and his prescriptions obsolete.
When we were summoned to a joint consultation, our views as to the proper
course of treatment seldom agreed. Doubtless he thought I ought to have
deferred to his seniority in years; but I held the doctrine which youth
deems a truth and age a paradox,--namely, that in science the young men
are the practical elders, inasmuch as they are schooled in the latest
experiences science has gathered up, while their seniors are cramped by
the dogmas they were schooled to believe when the world was some decades
the younger.

Meanwhile my reputation continued rapidly to advance; it became more
than local; my advice was sought even by patients from the metropolis.
That ambition, which, conceived in early youth, had decided my career and
sweetened all its labours,--the ambition to take a rank and leave a name
as one of the great pathologists to whom humanity accords a grateful, if
calm, renown,--saw before it a level field and a certain goal.

I know not whether a success far beyond that usually attained at the
age I had reached served to increase, but it seemed to myself to
justify, the main characteristic of my moral organization,--intellectual