t." So he went over
to Mrs. Hopkins's in the evening, and was shown up into the study.

Master Gridley treated the Doctor to a cup of such tea as bachelors
sometimes keep hid away in mysterious caddies. He presently began asking
certain questions about the grand climacteric, which eventful period of
life he was fast approaching. Then he discoursed of medicine, ancient
and modern, tasking the Doctor's knowledge not a little, and evincing a
good deal of acquaintance with old doctrines and authors.

He had a few curious old medical books in his library, which he said he
should like to show Dr. Hurlbut.

"There, now! What do you say to this copy of Joannes de Ketam, Venice,
1522? Look at these woodcuts,--the first anatomical pictures ever
printed, Doctor, unless these others of Jacobus Berengarius are older!
See this scene of the plague-patient, the doctor smelling at his
pouncet-box, the old nurse standing square at the bedside, the young
nurse with the bowl, holding back and turning her head away, and the old
burial-hag behind her, shoving her forward, a very curious book, Doctor,
and has the first phrenological picture in it ever made. Take a look,
too, at my Vesalius,--not the Leyden edition, Doctor, but the one with
the grand old original figures,--so good that they laid them to Titian.
And look here, Doctor, I could n't help getting this great
folio Albinus, 1747,--and the nineteenth century can't touch it,
Doctor,--can't touch it for completeness and magnificence, so all the
learned professors tell me! Brave old fellows, Doctor, and put their
lives into their books as you gentlemen don't pretend to do nowadays.
And good old fellows, Doctor,--high-minded, scrupulous, conscientious,
punctilious,--remembered their duties to man and to woman, and felt all
the responsibilities of their confidential relation to families. Did you
ever read the oldest of medical documents,--the Oath of Hippocrates?"

The Doctor thought he had read it, but did not remember much about it.

"It 's worth reading, Doctor,--it's worth remembering; and, old as it
is, it is just as good to-day as it was when it was laid down as a
rule of conduct four hundred years before the Sermon on the Mount was
delivered. Let me read it to you, Dr. Hurlbut."

There was something in Master Gridley's look that made the Doctor feel a
little nervous; he did not know just what was coming.

Master Gridley took out his great Hippocrates, the edition of Foesius,