king too." said Kerry, with a sententious gravity
almost revolting--"when the fingers does be going that way, it's a
mighty bad sign. If I seen the hounds working with their toes, I never
knew them recover."

CHAPTER IX. A DOCTOR'S VISIT

The night was far advanced as the doctor arrived at the O'Donoghue's
house, drenched with rain, and fatigued by the badness of the roads,
where his gig was often compelled to proceed for above a mile at a foot
pace. Doctor Roach was not in the most bland of tempers as he reached
his destination; and, of a verity, his was a nature that stood not in
any need of increased acerbity. The doctor was a type of a race at one
time very general, but now, it is hard to say wherefore, nearly extinct
in Ireland. But so it is; the fruits of the earth change not in course
of years more strikingly, than the fashions of men's minds. The habits,
popular enough in one generation, survive as eccentricities in another,
and are extinct in a third.

There was a pretty general impression in the world, some sixty or
seventy years back, that a member of the medical profession, who had
attained to any height in his art, had a perfect right to dispense with
all the amenities and courtesies which regulate social life among less
privileged persons. The concessions now only yielded to a cook, were
then extended to a physician; and in accordance with the privilege by
which he administered most nauseous doses to the body, he was suffered
to extend his dominion, and apply scarcely more palatable remedies
to the minds of his patients. As if the ill-flavoured draughts had
tinctured the spirit that conceived them, the tone of his thoughts
usually smacked of bitters, until at last he seemed to have realized, in
his own person, the conflicting agencies of the pharmacopoeia, and was
at once acrid, and pungent, and soporific together.

The College of Physicians could never have reproached Doctor Roach with
conceding a single iota of their privileges. Never was there one who
more stoutly maintained, in his whole practice through life, the blessed
immunity of "the Doctor." The magic word "Recipe," which headed his
prescriptions, suggested a tone of command to all he said, and both his
drugs and dicta were swallowed without remonstrance.

It may not be a flattering confession for humanity, but it is assuredly
a true one, that the exercise of power, no matter how humble its sphere,
or how limited its range, will eventu