exercise? And yet I am
well persuaded that not a few medical men exercise far too little.
Riding on horseback, though it may sometimes shake off consumption, is
not so good an exercise for the mass of mankind--perhaps not even for
consumptive people themselves--as an alternation of walking with the
riding. This, also, I took good care to secure.

Physicians are usually either very greatly addicted to the habit of
dosing and drugging for every little ill, real or imaginary, or
particularly hostile to it. I have seldom found any such thing as a
golden mean in this respect, among them. My feelings, saying nothing at
present of the sober convictions of my head, led me almost to the
extreme of no medicine, if extreme it can be called. I did not even
retain my daily tumbler of ale.

Though I began my medical career as an apprentice or journeyman, merely,
and went abroad chiefly as the associate of my predecessor, I was soon
called upon in his absence, and in other circumstances, to take the
whole charge of patients; or at least to do so till a longer experience
was available. Thus I was gradually inducted into an important office,
without incurring a full and proportionate share of its
responsibilities.

CHAPTER XXV.

MY TEMPERANCE PLEDGE.

The subject of Temperance, in its present associated forms, had, at this
time, just began to be agitated. At least, it had just begun to receive
attention in the newspapers which I was accustomed to see. It could not
be otherwise than that I should be deeply interested in its discussion.

I had been brought up, as I have before intimated, to a pretty free use
of cider and tea; but not of ardent spirits or coffee. Neither of these
was regularly used in my father's family; though both occasionally were.
But I had abandoned cider long before this time, because I found it had
a tendency to produce, or at least to aggravate, those eruptive diseases
to which I was greatly liable. Temperance, then, in the popular sense of
the term, was, to me, an easy virtue.

And yet as a temperance man--in the circle of my acquaintance--I stood
nearly alone. No individual around me was ready to take the ground I
occupied. Of this, however, I was not fully apprised, till a patient
attempt to recruit the temperance ranks convinced me of the fact. But I
will give you a full account of my enterprise, since it has a bearing on
my subsequent history and confessions.

With the aid of a Boston paper