Nor does it always follow that the undergraduate may be saved from this disgrace and ruin by firmness and honorable principles. He is, for the first time in his life, his own master. The superintendence of the college tutor amounts to just nothing at all. Immediately he arrives at the university, he is besieged by tradesmen. It is particularly impressed upon him, that money is not necessary to conclude a bargain. He can pay when he likes. Three years hence will do. The youth is sorely tempted. He finds his new college acquaintance sailing under press of canvas, over the sea of extravagance. They give splendid wine parties, and invite him to the jovial board. He is bound to return the hospitality of these prime fellows. One extravagance leads to another. The port and sherry, that he could afford, shine no more upon his table. He drinks hock now, and claret, and princely champagne, at two dollars and fifty cents a bottle. He smokes cigars at $10 a pound. He is living like a gentleman. Let the poor sizar toil over musty books; he will have a race horse. 'Tis a fine life. How much better than a schoolboy's. He speaks of his father as the governor, and talks in a flash manner of the girls he is acquainted with. He thinks he will marry one of them, but his choice is not determined. The college dons, professors, tutors, fellows, know the temptations, know the risk, know the ruinous goal, but no one arrests his career. Which is most to blame; the raw, undisciplined boy, or the evil university system?
I passed a rare time at Cambridge. What delight it was in those cold mornings to take a bracing walk into the country, and looking back over miles of level land, to behold the chapel of King's College, and the tower of St. Mary's church, which had been the land beacons of aspiring students for so many generations! I verily believe that the chapel of King's College is the finest piece of modern architecture in the world. It is a poem in stone! Teaching so muchnot of this earth, only; least of this earth, perhaps. I never wearied of walking in it, and around it, repeating Wordsworth's sonnet, and feeling that 'for a few white-robed scholars only,' it was not built; but as an utterance of man's spirit, more fervent than he could express in the articulate speech of man. The soul of the individual, nurtured by any semblance of culture, who can stand unmoved beneath that fretted roof, must be cold as the frozen zone. It remains with me, like Niagara.
As a college, Trinity is the most interesting. The chapel is very inferior to that of King's, but it is hallowed by the memory of Newton. Roubiliac's statue of the philosopher is the chief object of interest, and the Trinity men do not envy the scholars of King's their chapel, when they behold that statue. The dean of Trinity, the Rev. W. Carns, author of the 'Life of Simeon,' is the present possessor of the rooms once occupied by Newton. The little watch tower where he pierced the heavens with his telescope is still standing. One ascends it, and surveys the firmament, not without a reverential feeling. Cambridge abounds with the associations of genius. Chaucer studied here, and at Oxford also, it is said; and in treading the great court of Trinity, one cannot help thinking of Bacon. Milton's mulberry tree is yet standing, and puts forth a few fresh leaves every spring in the garden of Christ's College. His manuscript of 'Comus,' partly in his own writing, partly in that of his amanuensisof one of his daughters, it is probableis in the library of Trinity College, and may be seen by the curious. The spirits of these venerable men still haunt the scenes of their studious youth, and with their mighty shadows brooding over us, what is the value of dollars and dimes?
A PHYSICIAN'S STORY
'Phil, keep the office door shut and the windows open. None of your sacrilegious games of marbles on the front steps. Behave yourself respectably, and wash bottles till I come back, or I'll turn you off to-morrow. Have an eye to Mrs. Thompson's gate, and if anybody should call for me, you know where I am to be found, I suppose?
Phil responded by a grinning nod, the question was superfluous. It is an attribute of boys of fourteen that they know everything they should not know, and if there be one of the class who excels his fellows in useless knowledge, my Phil is that lad. Apparently busied forever in those light but continuous labors which pertain to an office boy, he contrived to keep a far more watchful eye upon my movements than I was able to do upon his, and could tell (probably did) exactly in what direction I usually bent my steps after the above formula, whether I walked on the right or left hand side of the street, and how soon I reached my destinationthe number of times my tender knuckles came in contact with a certain hard green door, and the reception that awaited me inside it, the length of my staythe only thing he had a legitimate right to knowand the mien, cheerful or dejected, according to the fortunes of the day, with which I returned to the empty office and full bottles, over which he was supposed to mount guard during my absence.
Preferring not to notice the peculiarity of my assistant's manner, as it might involve awkward explanations, I closed the door of his prison with an authoritative bang, that shook the slate outside it, and strode with hasty steps down the village street. There was no occasion for hurry, the business I had on hand was not of a kind to demand it, and had been pending a reasonable time; nor would any more haste on my part be lively to advance it much, but would rather verify the old proverb, of 'less speed.' I therefore walked fast purely as a matter of principle, in the hope, that the village dames, who I knew were watching my progress from behind the green paper curtains of their 'sittin' room' windows, might possibly judge from my speed, that I had been called to a patient at last. Vain hope! idle precaution! every one of those astute matrons knew at least as well as myself the errand upon which I was bound, and far better than I, as I own in all humility, the state of health in the neighborhood, which precluded all possibility of any professional exertion on my part.
And here I may remark, literally en passant, that the town in which I had chosen to locate was salubrious to a painful and unnatural degree, the very last place in the world for a young physician in ordinary circumstances to seek his fortune, but my circumstances were peculiarit was not so much fortune that I soughtin short, I had my reasonsand a large practice would have greatly interfered with my more serious occupation. Still, I do not deny that a slight modicum of professional business, just to fill up the intervening time and save appearances, would not have been amiss, and I had been in fact rather anxiously looking for some symptoms of the sort for a considerable time, without any result at all. The inhabitants all took Hall's 'Journal of Health;' they cherished Buchan's 'Domestic Medicine,' they studied the 'Handbook of Hygiene;' they were learned in the works of Fowler. Cold water was cheap and plentiful, they used it externally and internallyexercise was fashionable and inevitable, where every lady was her own help, and every gentleman his own woodsawyer; food was just dear enough to make surfeits undesirable, and medicine was so unpopular that nobody before me ever ventured to open a drug store; the old ladies dispensed a few herbs privately, and that was the end of it. People did not seem to die; if anything was the matter with them, they perseveringly 'kept on,' till it stopped, the disease retiring in despair from their determination to be well. Fat parties, who ought to have been dropsical, were not so at allthey grew fatter, and flourished like green bay trees; lean persons, threatening to go off in a decline, declining to do so, remained. Adventurous little boys, falling from the tops of high trees to the stony ground, sustained no injuries beyond the maternal chastisement and brandy-and-brown-paper of home; babies defied croup and colic with the slender aid of 'Bateman's Drops,' and 'Syrup of Squills,' dispensed by a wise grandma, and children of mature years went through the popular infant disorders as they went through their grammars, and with about as much result; mumps and measles, chills and chicken pox, prevailed and disappeared without medical assistance, and though all the children in the village whooped like wild Indians, no anxious parent ever thought it necessary to call in a physician. There was but one in the place before my advent, a comfortable, elderly man, who selected the profession, as practised in his native town, because it interfered less than any other with his punctual habits of sleeping and eating, and was a gentlemanly sinecure, possessing peculiar privileges. No patient of his ever dreamt of calling him out at night, or keeping him away from his meals; the person to be ill, chose a convenient hour between dinner and tea, and gave respectful notice at a reasonable time beforehand. No extraordinary accidents, requiring wonderful feats of surgery, were ever permitted in his practice; no stranger shocked his nerves by dying suddenly at the village hotel; no mysterious diseases, unknown of science, baffled his skill, or defied it; the locality was too far south for bronchitis and consumption, too far north for poisonous malaria fevers and coups de soleil; and being inland, just inside the line of the coast scourges of cholera and yellow Jack. In short, to quote the only epitaph in the village churchyard, 'Physicians was in vain.'
And here I may remark, literally en passant, that the town in which I had chosen to locate was salubrious to a painful and unnatural degree, the very last place in the world for a young physician in ordinary circumstances to seek his fortune, but my circumstances were peculiarit was not so much fortune that I soughtin short, I had my reasonsand a large practice would have greatly interfered with my more serious occupation. Still, I do not deny that a slight modicum of professional business, just to fill up the intervening time and save appearances, would not have been amiss, and I had been in fact rather anxiously looking for some symptoms of the sort for a considerable time, without any result at all. The inhabitants all took Hall's 'Journal of Health;' they cherished Buchan's 'Domestic Medicine,' they studied the 'Handbook of Hygiene;' they were learned in the works of Fowler. Cold water was cheap and plentiful, they used it externally and internallyexercise was fashionable and inevitable, where every lady was her own help, and every gentleman his own woodsawyer; food was just dear enough to make surfeits undesirable, and medicine was so unpopular that nobody before me ever ventured to open a drug store; the old ladies dispensed a few herbs privately, and that was the end of it. People did not seem to die; if anything was the matter with them, they perseveringly 'kept on,' till it stopped, the disease retiring in despair from their determination to be well. Fat parties, who ought to have been dropsical, were not so at allthey grew fatter, and flourished like green bay trees; lean persons, threatening to go off in a decline, declining to do so, remained. Adventurous little boys, falling from the tops of high trees to the stony ground, sustained no injuries beyond the maternal chastisement and brandy-and-brown-paper of home; babies defied croup and colic with the slender aid of 'Bateman's Drops,' and 'Syrup of Squills,' dispensed by a wise grandma, and children of mature years went through the popular infant disorders as they went through their grammars, and with about as much result; mumps and measles, chills and chicken pox, prevailed and disappeared without medical assistance, and though all the children in the village whooped like wild Indians, no anxious parent ever thought it necessary to call in a physician. There was but one in the place before my advent, a comfortable, elderly man, who selected the profession, as practised in his native town, because it interfered less than any other with his punctual habits of sleeping and eating, and was a gentlemanly sinecure, possessing peculiar privileges. No patient of his ever dreamt of calling him out at night, or keeping him away from his meals; the person to be ill, chose a convenient hour between dinner and tea, and gave respectful notice at a reasonable time beforehand. No extraordinary accidents, requiring wonderful feats of surgery, were ever permitted in his practice; no stranger shocked his nerves by dying suddenly at the village hotel; no mysterious diseases, unknown of science, baffled his skill, or defied it; the locality was too far south for bronchitis and consumption, too far north for poisonous malaria fevers and coups de soleil; and being inland, just inside the line of the coast scourges of cholera and yellow Jack. In short, to quote the only epitaph in the village churchyard, 'Physicians was in vain.'
It was a beautiful morning on which I took my way through this healthful townI mean, of course, professionally speaking, a very fine morning, indeed. The air was warm and damp, as if laden with pleurisy and ague; the ground soft and oozy, seemed a sure thing for rheumatism and influenza. The sun unseasonably hot; fever and rush of blood to the head. Old Captain Hopkins is constitutionally inclined to gouthe never had a twinge through the rainy season, but it is just possible that this may settle him. Mother Hawks is rheumatic, is she? if she is about, disseminating scandal to-day, I shall be avenged for her slandering me; and the Sessions girls come out to get the news in all weather. That vicious child of Mrs. Thompson, after keeping me in suspense four months, will probably 'croup up' to-night, and its grandmother Banks is off on a visit, and Dr. Coachey never goes out after dark, and I live right over the way! With these encouraging reflections, and a grateful glance upward, where a copper-colored sun blazed through a sea of purple mist, I pursued my way to the mansion of Colonel Marston, father to Miss Dora Marston, to whom I am honorary cousin.
Colonel Marston's house is situated on a fine grassy knoll, shaded by handsome trees, and inclosed with a well kept hedge; it is just out of reach of village eyes and ears, but not beyond the pale of village curiosity. Anybody there can tell you by what right I address good Mrs. Marston as my aunt, and pretty Dora as my cousin, while being not in the least related to either. My dear mother, now deceased, when a young widow, possessed of some property and a little boy, married Miss Dora's uncle, and became her aunt, thus making me, as I consider, virtually her cousin. At any rate, for twenty years I have been a frequent visitor at the dear old house, recognized in my cousinly capacity by the family, and treated accordingly, and for more than half that time like a wolf in sheep's clothing, have I sought the avuncular mansion with an eye to Miss Dora, a fact she seems surprisingly unconscious of, considering how many times, by hint and innuendo, by sigh and look, and tender courtesy, and honest speech, I have shown her the place she occupies in my mind, and given her, as it appears, the right to drive me out of it, if possible. Tom Hayes is her favorite instrument of torture. He is the young lawyer of the place, as I am the young doctor, and is advancing about as fast in his profession. He is considered a good-looking fellow, though I don't see it, and has undoubtedly a fine voice, upon which pretext he spends about half his time twanging away upon Dora's guitar, and waking Col. Marston from his afternoon nap. It would look better, I must say, for a young man in his position, to be at home, waiting for practice; but I have heard that he says the same of me, and perhaps with equal justice. At all events, it was hard to find his horse already tied to the gate post on that particular spring day, when warm and weary, I arrived on the battle ground, prepared to put my fate to the touch at once.
On one side of the house lay the broad white public road, from which one deviated to approach this earthly paradise; on the other, a narrower private one, a mere cart track, grass-grown, cool, and shady, leading down to the mill stream that ran behind the grounds, brawling and seething and swelled by the spring rains into quite a respectable torrent. Down this path Dora always took me to walk when she wanted me to say anything uncommonly foolish, which could serve her as food for laughter, and down this path again we must always go when that villain Hayes was of the party, and she wanted to play me off against him, or him against me, or both against her womanly vanities. Accordingly I found them equipped for a walk, loitering on the front piazza, not waiting for me, however, as Dora took pains to explain, and as I could readily believe, for they were flirting over a new song. Not in the best of humor, I took the offered seat near them, wiped my heated brows, and advised my fair cousin not to saunter through the damp woodland paths on this most unhealthy morning. 'I advise you as a physician, mind you,' said I, to give weight to the opinion which might be denied it in my cousinly capacity; but she received it with utter contempt and ridicule of my pretensions, gladly joined by Mr. Hayes, whose white teeth gleamed wolfishly behind a long black mustache, at my expense. We had shaken hands with great cordiality; I had inquired after his clients, he had professed interest in my patients; I had asked him how he had enjoyed the ride with Miss Julia Stevens last evening, and he had just remembered seeing me, as he drove past Mrs. Hedge's in the front garden with Anna Hedge; a reminiscence which went a thought too far, for I had been, at the time of which he spoke, seated on this very piazza beside the innocent young lady opposite, who now showed no tokens of the sweet confusion, with which she listened to my broken confidence last night, and only glanced from one to the other with guileless interest and wondering simplicity.