young doctor had only half completed Cheselden's
article on Osteology. It began now to be evident that at this rate he
would never become an M.D., easily as this honor is obtained; and it
was equally doubtful whether the most complaisant censors of a medical
society, would, at the end of three years, admit him to practice. The
distinguished medical gentleman with whom he was attempting to play the
student, saw that if Harvey had not discovered the theory of the
circulation of the blood, Doctor Wheelwright certainly would never have
made it, and he hinted to his pupil in as delicate a manner as
possible, that even if he had been cut out by nature for a physician,
he had been spoiled in the making up. My friend was by this time quite
of the same opinion himself; and he thereupon quitted the profession,
with no more medical knowledge than the art of mixing suitable portions
of salts and senna for children, and the preparation of cough-drops, by
compounding the syrup of squills with paregoric and balsam of honey in
equal proportions--which mixture, by the way, is the best prescription
to be found in the Vade Mecum of any physician in Christendom--from Sir
Astley Cooper down to Hahnnemann, of all medical humbugs the chief.
Would that Daniel Wheelwright were the only person who has trifled away
the misapplied money of industrious and misjudging parents!

CHAPTER VI.

HOW HE BECAME A MERCHANT--AND THE RESULT.

"----Now I play a merchant's part,
And venture madly on a desperate mart."--_Shakspeare._

"A man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratched."--_Idem._

Having thus "thrown physic to the dogs," the next important subject of
consideration was the choice of some new occupation or pursuit, not of
a professional character. His mother's project of making him a
clergyman had been previously rejected, as stated in a former chapter.
The decision might have been otherwise had the lot of our hero been
cast in England, where the minor clergy of the establishment purchase
their sermons already written to their hands, if they are able, or copy
them from the moral essays of Doctor Johnson, or the more devotional
writings of Hannah More, according to their tastes and feelings, if
they are not. But such easy methods of pulpit preparation are not
tolerated in this country, unless in respect of the youngest
ecclesiastics; and even they are compelled to be exceedingly chary in
the use even of the printed skeletons to be found