establishment. Overlooking the bearded Saracens, the Indian Queens, and
the wooden Bibles, let its direct our attention to the white post newly
erected at the corner of the street, and surmounted by a gilded
countenance which flashes in the early sunbeams like veritable gold.
It is a bust of AEsculapius, evidently of the latest London manufacture;
and from the door behind it steams forth a mingled smell of musk and
assafaetida and other drugs of potent perfume, as if an appropriate
sacrifice were just laid upon the altar of the medical deity. Five or
six idle people are already collected, peeping curiously in at the
glittering array of gallipots and phials, and deciphering the labels
which tell their contents in the mysterious and imposing nomenclature of
ancient physic. They are next attracted by the printed advertisement of
a Panacea, promising life but one day short of eternity, and youth and
health commensurate. An old man, his head as white as snow, totters in
with a hasty clattering of his staff, and becomes the earliest
purchaser, hoping that his wrinkles will disappear more swiftly than
they gathered. The Doctor (so styled by courtesy) shows the upper half
of his person behind the counter, and appears to be a slender and rather
tall man; his features are difficult to describe, possessing nothing
peculiar, except a flexibility to assume all characters it, turn, while
his eye, shrewd, quick, and saucy, remains the same throughout.
Whenever a customer enters the shop, if be desire a box of pills, he
receives with them an equal number of hard, round, dry jokes,--or if a
dose of salts, it is mingled with a portion of the salt of Attica,--or
if some hot, Oriental drug, it is accompanied by a racy word or two that
tingle on the mental palate,--all without the least additional cost.
Then there are twistings of mouths which never lost their gravity
before. As each purchaser retires, the spectators see a resemblance of
his visage pass over that of the apothecary, in which all the ludicrous
points are made most prominent, as if a magic looking-glass had caught