to me the inestimable benefits of his long experience and his cordial
introduction was in itself an assurance that a metropolitan practice
is not essential to a national renown.

I went, then, to L----, and before the two years of my partnership
had expired, my success justified my kind friend's selection, and far
more than realized my own expectations. I was fortunate in effecting
some notable cures in the earliest cases submitted to me, and it is
everything in the career of a physician when good luck wins betimes for
him that confidence which patients rarely accord except to lengthened
experience. To the rapid facility with which my way was made, some
circumstances apart from professional skill probably contributed. I was
saved from the suspicion of a medical adventurer by the accidents of
birth and fortune. I belonged to an ancient family (a branch of the
once powerful border-clan of the Fenwicks) that had for many generations
held a fair estate in the neighbourhood of Windermere. As an only
son I had succeeded to that estate on attaining my majority, and had
sold it to pay off the debts which had been made by my father, who had
the costly tastes of an antiquary and collector. The residue on the
sale insured me a modest independence apart from the profits of a
profession; and as I had not been legally bound to defray my father's
debts, so I obtained that character for disinterestedness and integrity
which always in England tends to propitiate the public to the successes
achieved by industry or talent. Perhaps, too, any professional ability
I might possess was the more readily conceded, because I had cultivated
with assiduity the sciences and the scholarship which are collaterally
connected with the study of medicine. Thus, in a word, I established a
social position which came in aid of my professional repute, and
silenced much of that envy which usually embitters and sometimes impedes
success.