stars. So high an opinion was entertained of his skill,
particularly by the German and Dutch inhabitants, that they always
resorted to him in desperate cases. He was one of those infallible
doctors, that are always effecting sudden and surprising cures, when
the patient has been given up by all the regular physicians; unless,
as is shrewdly observed, the case has been left too long before it was
put into their hands. The doctor's library was the talk and marvel of
the neighbourhood, I might almost say of the entire burgh. The good
people looked with reverence at a man that had read three whole
shelves full of books, and some of them, too, as large as a family
Bible. There were many disputes among the members of the little
Lutheran church, as to which was the wiser man, the doctor or the
Dominie. Some of his admirers even went so far as to say, that he knew
more than the governor himself-in a word, it was thought that there
was no end to his knowledge!

No sooner was Dolph received into the doctor's family, than he was put
in possession of the lodging of his predecessor. It was a garret-room
of a steep-roofed Dutch house, where the rain patted on the shingles,
and the lightning gleamed, and the wind piped through the crannies in
stormy weather; and where whole troops of hungry rats, like Don
Cossacks, galloped about in defiance of traps and ratsbane.

He was soon up to his ears in medical studies, being employed,
morning, noon, and night, in rolling pills, filtering tinctures, or
pounding the pestle and mortar, in one corner of the laboratory; while
the doctor would take his seat in another corner, when he had nothing
else to do, or expected visitors, and, arrayed in his morning-gown and
velvet cap, would pore over the contents of some folio volume. It is
true, that the regular thumping of Dolph's pestle, or, perhaps, the
drowsy buzzing of the summer flies, would now and then lull the little
man into a slumber; but then his spectacles were always wide awake,
and studiously regarding the book.

There was another personage in the house, however, to whom Dolph was
obliged to pay allegiance. Though a bachelor, and a man of such great
dignity and importance, yet the doctor was, like many other wise men,
subject to petticoat government. He was completely under the sway of
his housekeeper; a spare, busy, fretting housewife, in a little,
round, quilted, German cap, with a huge bunch of keys jingling at the
girdle of an exceed