octor a-riding out to see
his patients, clad in his suit of sober brown or claret color with
shining buttons made of silver coins. The full-skirted coat had great
pockets and flaps, as had the long waistcoat that reached well over the
hips. Knee-breeches dressed his shapely legs, while fine silk stockings
and buckled shoes displayed his well-turned calves and ankles. On his
head he wore a cocked hat and wig. He owned and wore in turn wigs of
different sizes and dignity--ties, periwigs, bags, and bobs. His
portrait was painted in a full-bottomed wig that rivalled the Lord
Chancellor's in size; but his every-day riding-wig was a rather
commonplace horsehair affair with a stiff eel-skin cue. One wig he lost
by a mysterious accident while attending a patient who was lying ill of
a fever, of which the crisis seemed at hand. The doctor decided to
remain all night, and sat down by a table in the sick man's room. The
hours passed slowly away. Physician and nurse and goodwife talked and
droned on; the sick man moaned and tossed in his bed, and begged
fruitlessly for water. At last the room grew silent, the tired watchers
dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his
eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the
table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and
when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room
collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the
valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, looking
around for his wig; while the sick man, who had jumped out of bed in
the confusion and captured a pitcher of water, drunk half the contents,
and thrown the remainder over the doctor's head, was lying behind the
bed curtains laughing hysterically at the ridiculous appearance of the
man of medicine. Instant death was predicted for the invalid, who,
strange to say, either from the laughter or the water, began to recover
from that moment. The terrified physician was uncertain whether he ought
to attribute the conflagration of his wig to a violent demonstration of
the devil in his effort to obtain possession of the sick man's soul, or
to the powerful influence of some conjunction of the planets, or to the
new-fangled power of electricity which Dr. Franklin had just discovered
and was making so much talk about, and was so recklessly tinkering with
in Philadelphia at that very time. The doctor had strongly disapp