d of that period Mr
Brookes left us, and I took the whole of his department upon myself,
giving great satisfaction to Mr Cophagus.

And now that I have announced my promotion, it will perhaps be as well
that I give the reader some idea of my personal appearance, upon which I
have hitherto been silent. I was thin, between fifteen and sixteen
years old, very tall for my age, and of my figure I had no reason to be
ashamed; a large beaming eye, with a slightly aquiline nose, a high
forehead, fair in complexion, but with _very_ dark hair. I was always
what may be termed a remarkably clean-looking boy, from the peculiarity
of my skin and complexion; my teeth were small, but were transparent,
and I had a very deep dimple in my chin. Like all embryo apothecaries,
I carried in my appearance, if not the look of wisdom, most certainly
that of self-sufficiency, which does equally well with the world in
general. My forehead was smooth, and very white, and my dark locks were
combed back systematically, and with a regularity that said, as plainly
as hair could do, "The owner of this does everything by prescription,
measurement, and rule." With my long fingers I folded up the little
packets, with an air as thoughtful and imposing as that of a minister
who has just presented a protocol as interminable as unintelligible; and
the look of solemn sagacity with which I poured out the contents of one
vial into the other, would have well become the king's physician, when
he watched the "lord's anointed" in _articulo mortis_.

As I followed up my saturnine avocation, I generally had an open book on
the counter beside me; not a marble-covered dirty volume, from the
Minerva press, or a half-bound, half-guinea's worth of fashionable
trash, but a good, honest, heavy-looking, wisdom-implying book, horribly
stuffed with epithet of drug; a book in which Latin words were
redundant, and here and there were to be observed the crabbed characters
of Greek. Altogether, with my book and my look, I cut such a truly
medical appearance, that even the most guarded would not have hesitated
to allow me the sole conduct of a whitlow, from inflammation to
suppuration, and from suppuration to cure, or have refused to have
confided to me the entire suppression of a gumboil. Such were my
personal qualifications at the time that I was raised to the important
office of dispenser of, I may say, life and death.

It will not surprise the reader when I tell him that