ce and address pretty much like his apparel,
rough, strong, and warm, fit for all weathers. A heartier person never
lived.

In his profession he was eminently skilful, bold, confident, and
successful. The neighbouring physicians liked to come after Mr. Hallett;
they were sure to find nothing to undo. And blunt and abrupt as was
his general manner, he was kind and gentle in a sick-room; only nervous
disorders, the pet diseases of Mr. Simon Saunders, he could not abide.
He made short work with them; frightened them away as one does by
children when they have the hiccough; or if the malady were pertinacious
and would not go, he fairly turned off the patient. Once or twice,
indeed, on such occasions, the patient got the start, and turned him
off; Mrs. Emery, for instance, the lady's maid at New Place, most
delicate and mincing of waiting-gentlewomen, motioned him from her
presence; and Miss Deane, daughter of Martha Deane, haberdasher,
who, after completing her education at a boarding-school, kept a closet
full of millinery in a little den behind her mamma's shop, and was by
many degrees the finest lady in Hazelby, was so provoked at being told
by him that nothing ailed her, that, to prove her weakly condition, she
pushed him by main force out of doors.

With these exceptions Mr. Hallett was the delight of the whole town, as
well as of all the farm-houses within six miles round. He just suited
the rich yeomanry, cured their diseases, and partook of their feasts;
was constant at christenings, and a man of prime importance at weddings.
A country merry-making was nothing without "the Doctor." He was "the
very prince of good fellows;" had a touch of epicurism, which, without
causing any distaste of his own homely fare, made dainties acceptable
when they fell in his way; was a most absolute carver; prided himself
upon a sauce of his own invention, for fish and game--"Hazelby sauce"
he called it; and was universally admitted to be the best compounder
of a bowl of punch in the county.

Besides these rare convivial accomplishments, his gay and jovial temper
rendered him the life of the table. There was no resisting his droll
faces, his droll stories, his jokes, his tricks, or his laugh--the most
contagious cachination that ever was heard. Nothing in the shape of fun
came amiss to him. He would join in a catch or roar out a solo, which
might be heard a mile off; would play at hunt the slipper or blind man's
buff; was a great man