ection to his looking at
the copies of my prescriptions in the chemist's book. Though he was old
enough to be my father (he remarked) it seemed that experience counted
for nothing; he had still something to learn from his junior, in the
treatment of disease--and so on.

"At that miserable time of doubt and anxiety, I could only send a verbal
reply, leaving him to do what he liked. Before I tell you of the use
that he made of his liberty of action, I must confess something relating
to the prescriptions themselves. Don't be afraid of long and learned
words, and don't suppose that I am occupying your attention in this way,
without a serious reason for it which you will presently understand.

"A note in the manuscript--to my study of which, I owe, under God, the
preservation of Carmina's life--warned me that chemists, in the writer's
country, had either refused to make up certain prescriptions given in
the work, or had taken the liberty of altering the new quantities and
combinations of some of the drugs prescribed.

"Precisely the same thing happened here, in the case of the first
chemist to whom I sent. He refused to make up the medicine, unless I
provided him with a signed statement taking the whole responsibility on
myself.

"Having ascertained the exact nature of his objection, I dismissed him
without his guarantee, and employed another chemist; taking care (in
the interests of my time and my temper) to write my more important
prescriptions under reserve. That is to say, I followed the conventional
rules, as to quantities and combinations, and made the necessary
additions or changes from my own private stores when the medicine was
sent home.

"Poor foolish Mr. Null, finding nothing to astonish him in my course of
medicine--as represented by the chemist--appears by his own confession,
to have copied the prescriptions with a malicious object in view. 'I
have sent them, (he informs me, in a second letter) to Doctor Benjulia;
in order that he too may learn something in his profession from the
master who has dispensed with our services.' This new effort of irony
means that I stand self-condemned of vanity, in presuming to rely on my
own commonplace resources--represented by the deceitful evidence of the
chemist's book!

"But I am grateful to Mr. Null, notwithstanding: he has done me a
service, in meaning to do me an injury.

"My imperfect prescriptions have quieted the mind of the man to whom he
sent them. This wre