and see the waiting-room. Pooh! what an atmosphere!
Why on earth can't you open the windows for yourselves? I never saw
such folk! There are thirty people in this room, Munro, and not one with
sense enough to open a window to save himself from suffocation."

"I tried, sir, but there's a screw through the sash," cried one fellow.

"Ah, my boy, you'll never get on in the world if you can't open a
window without raising a sash," said Cullingworth, slapping him on the
shoulder. He took the man's umbrella and stuck it through two of the
panes of glass.

"That's the way!" he said. "Boy, see that the screw is taken out. Now
then, Munro, come along, and we'll get to work."

We went up a wooden stair, uncarpeted, leaving every room beneath us,
as far as I could see, crowded with patients. At the top was a bare
passage, which had two rooms opposite to each other at one end, and a
single one at the other.

"This is my consulting room," said he, leading the way into one of
these. It was a good-sized square chamber, perfectly empty save for
two plain wooden chairs and an unpainted table with two books and a
stethoscope upon it. "It doesn't look like four or five thousand a year,
does it? Now, there is an exactly similar one opposite which you can
have for yourself. I'll send across any surgical cases which may turn
up. To-day, however, I think you had better stay with me, and see how I
work things."

"I should very much like to," said I.

"There are one or two elementary rules to be observed in the way of
handling patients," he remarked, seating himself on the table and
swinging his legs. "The most obvious is that you must never let them see
that you want them. It should be pure condescension on your part seeing
them at all; and the more difficulties you throw in the way of it, the
more they think of it. Break your patients in early, and keep them well
to heel. Never make the fatal mistake of being polite to them. Many
foolish young men fall into this habit, and are ruined in consequence.
Now, this is my form"--he sprang to the door, and putting his two hands
to his mouth he bellowed: "Stop your confounded jabbering down there! I
might as well be living above a poultry show! There, you see," he added
to me, "they will think ever so much more of me for that."

"But don't they get offended?" I asked.

"I'm afraid not. I have a name for this sort of thing now, and they have
come to expect it. But an offended patient--I mean