he following is
characteristic:--A certain noble personage, now enjoying a situation
of great responsibility in the Sister Kingdom, had been waiting for
a long time in the surgeon's anteroom, when, seeing those who had
arrived before him, successively called in, he became somewhat
impatient, and sent his card in. No notice was taken of the hint; he
sent another card--another--another--and another; still no answer.
At length he gained admission in his turn; and, full of nobility
and choler, he asked, rather aristocratically, why he had been kept
waiting so long?--"Wh--ew!" responded the professor; "because you
didn't come sooner, to be sure. And now, if your lordship will sit
down, I will hear what you have to say."
One thing Mr. Abernethy cannot abide, that is, any interruption to his
discourse. This it is, in fact, which so often irritates him, so often
causes him to snarl.--"People come here," he has often said to us,
"to consult me, and they will torture me with their long and foolish
fiddle-de-dee stories; so we quarrel, and then they blackguard me all
about this large town; but I can't help that."
That Abernethy is odd all the world knows, but his oddity is far more
amusing than repulsive, far more playful than bearish. Yates's picture
of him last year was not bad; neither was it good--it wanted the
raciness of the original. Let the reader imagine a smug, elderly,
sleek, and venerable-looking man, approaching seventy years of age,
rather (as novel-writers say) below than above the middle height,
somewhat inclined to corpulency, and upright in his carriage withal;
with his hair most primly powdered, and nicely curled round his brow
and temples: let them imagine such a person habited in sober black,
with his feet thrust carelessly into a pair of unlaced half-boots,
and his hands into the pockets of his "peculiars," and they have the
"glorious John" of the profession before their eyes. The following
colloquy, which occurred not many days since, between him and a friend
of ours, is so characteristic of the professor, that we cannot resist
its insertion:--
Having entered the room, our friend "opened the proceedings." "I wish
you to ascertain what is the matter with my eye, sir. It is very
painful, and I am afraid there is some great mischief going
on."--"Which I can't see," said Abernethy, placing the patient before
the window, and looking closely at the eye.--"But--" interposed
our friend.--"Which I can't see,"
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