It was half
buried in foliage, surrounded by dense woods and green hills, with a
clear, swift river running by. The inhabitants were divided into three
distinct classes--the poor, who gained a scanty livelihood by working in
the fields, the shop-keepers, and the gentry, the latter class
consisting principally of old maids and widows, ladies of unblemished
gentility and limited means. Among the latter Dr. Letsom was not
popular. He had an unpleasant fashion of calling everything by its right
name. If a lady would take a little more stimulant than was good for her
he could not be persuaded to call her complaint "nervousness;" when
idleness and ennui preyed upon a languid frame, he had a startling habit
of rousing the patient by a mental cautery. The poor idolized him, but
the ladies pronounced him coarse, abrupt; and when ladies decide against
a doctor, fate frowns upon him.
How was he to get on in the world? Twenty years before he had thought
less of getting on than of the interests of science or of doing good;
now those ideas were gradually leaving him--life had become a stern
hand-to-hand fight with hard necessity.
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