In the centre stood a claw-footed table, with pestle
and mortar, phials and gallipots, and a pair of small, burnished
scales. At one end was a heavy clothes-press, turned into a receptacle
for drugs and compounds; against which hung the doctor's hat and
cloak, and gold-headed cane, and on the top grinned a human skull.
Along the mantelpiece were glass vessels, in which were snakes and
lizards, and a human foetus preserved in spirits. A closet, the doors
of which were taken off, contained three whole shelves of books, and
some, too, of mighty folio dimensions--a collection, the like of which
Dolph had never before beheld. As, however, the library did not take
up the whole of the closet, the doctor's thrifty housekeeper had
occupied the rest with pots of pickles and preserves; and had hung
about the room, among awful implements of the healing art, strings of
red pepper and corpulent cucumbers, carefully preserved for seed.
Peter de Groodt, and his protege, were received with great gravity and
stateliness by the doctor, who was a very wise, dignified little man,
and never smiled. He surveyed Dolph from head to foot, above, and
under, and through his spectacles; and the poor lad's heart quailed as
these great glasses glared on him like two full moons.
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