isplaying a great brown jar. This he carried
over and deposited on the centre of my mantel-piece.

"You will permit me, Dr. Munro, sir, to place this trifle in your room.
It's lava, sir; lava from Vesuvius, and made in Naples. By ----, you may
think its empty, Dr. Munro, sir, but it is full of my best wishes; and
when you've got the best practice in this town you may point to that
vase and tell how it came from a skipper of an armed transport, who
backed you from the start."

I tell you, Bertie, the tears started to my eyes, and I could hardly
gulp out a word or two of thanks. What a crisscross of qualities in
one human soul! It was not the deed or the words; but it was the almost
womanly look in the eyes of this broken, drink-sodden old Bohemian--the
sympathy and the craving for sympathy which I read there. Only for an
instant though, for he hardened again into his usual reckless and half
defiant manner.

"There's another thing, sir. I've been thinking for some time back of
having a medical opinion on myself. I'd be glad to put myself under your
hands, if you would take a survey of me."

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Dr. Munro, sir," said he, "I am a walking museum. You could fit what
ISN'T the matter with me on to the back of a ---- visiting card. If
there's any complaint you want to make a special study of, just you come
to me, sir, and see what I can do for you. It's not every one that can
say that he has had cholera three times, and cured himself by living
on red pepper and brandy. If you can only set the ---- little germs
sneezing they'll soon leave you alone. That's my theory about cholera,
and you should make a note of it, Dr. Munro, sir, for I was shipmates
with fifty dead men when I was commanding the armed transport Hegira in
the Black Sea, and I know ---- well what I am talking about."

I fill in Whitehall's oaths with blanks because I feel how hopeless it
is to reproduce their energy and variety. I was amazed when he stripped,
for his whole body was covered with a perfect panorama of tattooings,
with a big blue Venus right over his heart.

"You may knock," said he, when I began to percuss his chest, "but I am
---- sure there's no one at home. They've all gone visiting one another.
Sir John Hutton had a try some years ago. 'Why, dammy, man, where's your
liver?' said he. 'Seems to me that some one has stirred you up with a
porridge stick,' said he. 'Nothing is in its right place.' 'Except
my heart,