gical and medical books, put into my hands by Mr Cophagus, who
explained whenever I applied to him, and I soon obtained a very fair
smattering of my profession. He also taught me how to bleed, by making
me, in the first instance, puncture very scientifically all the larger
veins of a cabbage-leaf, until well satisfied with the delicacy of my
hand, and the precision of my eye, he wound up his instructions by
permitting me to breathe a vein in his own arm.

"Well," said Timothy, when he first saw me practising, "I have often
heard it said, there's no getting blood out of a turnip; but it seems
there is more chance with a cabbage. I tell you what, Japhet, you may
try your hand upon me as much as you please, for two-pence a go."

I consented to this arrangement, and by dint of practising on Timothy
over and over again, I became quite perfect. I should here observe,
that my anxiety relative to my birth increased every day, and that in
one of the books lent me by Mr Cophagus, there was a dissertation upon
the human frame, sympathies, antipathies, and also on those features and
peculiarities most likely to descend from one generation to another. It
was there asserted, that the _nose_ was the facial feature most likely
to be transmitted from father to son. As I before have mentioned, my
nose was rather aquiline; and after I had read this book, it was
surprising with what eagerness I examined the faces of those whom I met;
and if I saw a nose upon any man's face, at all resembling my own, I
immediately would wonder and surmise whether that person could be my
father. The constant dwelling upon the subject at last created a
species of monomania, and a hundred times a day I would mutter to
myself, "_Who is my father_?" indeed, the very bells, when they rung a
peal, seemed, as in the case of Whittington, to chime the question, and
at last I talked so much on the subject to Timothy, who was my _Fidus
Achate_, and bosom friend, that I really believe, partial as he was to
me, he wished my father at the devil.

Our shop was well appointed with all that glare and glitter with which
we decorate the "_house of call_" of disease and death. Being situated
in such a thoroughfare, passengers would stop to look in, and
ragged-vested, and in other garments still more ragged, little boys
would stand to stare at the variety of colours, and the 'pottecary
gentleman, your humble servant, who presided over so many
labelled-in-gold phalanxes