"Here you are, Mr. Smith," I exclaim presently, as pleasantly as I can, on emerging from behind my screen, bottle in hand, "Here is some medicine for you, without either peppermint or salts; and I have no doubt, if you take it regularly, that it will do you a great deal of good."

"All right, doctor," replied the club-man, in a more goodhumoured tone of voice than he has yet spoken in, his little joke on the last page having restored his ruffled temper. "You musn't mind me I'm nowt but a roughish sort of chap, I ain't."

Whereupon, in token of reconciliation, he extends a grimy paw for me to shake; but pretending not to see it, I hastily bid him "Good morning," and retire behind my counter. The fellow is a chimney-sweep, and has, certainly, forgotten to wash his hands then, fearing he may be offended, I continue from my coign of vantage, "Good morning, Smith, good morning; look up again in a day or two, if you are not better." Then, to the page, "Martin, in a loud voice, to be heard in the passage, "show the gentleman out."

N.B.-We are all "ladies" and "gentlemen" in the neighbourhood of Victoria Park.

Exit Smith, and therewith enter Mrs. Jones, much excited, with a child clasped tighly across her breast. They would, both mother and young one, look all the better, be all the healthier, and cer. tainly smell all the sweeter, for the use of a little soap and water, which I feel strongly tempted to recommend, but refrain for fear of offending my visitor, who is a "Fernale Druid," (why not Druidess?) and a person of much importance in her "Lodge; " so I inquire, blandly, instead," What can I do for you this morning, Mrs. Jones?" and, as I put the question, feel like the proprietor of a greengrocery, who sells coal by the pound. "What can I do for you this morning, Mrs. Jones ?"

The "good lady," who hails from the sister isle, and, at the present moment exhales a powerful odour of London giu, instead of replying, bursts into a flood of tears, and hugs the bundle of unsavoury rags she carries in her arms, so close to her dishevelled bosom, as to elicit therefrom-the bundle, not the bosom-a series of the most appalling shrieks.

"Dear me dear me !" I exclaim, as soon as I can make myself heard above the din, "what is the matter, Mrs. Jones? do try and compose yourself, my good woman, and tell me what it is you want. Is there anything wrong with the child?"

66

Wrong! is it?" she answers," sure, doctor dear, it's killed and murdered ontirely, so it is, the darlint! och! save me child ! save me child! an' the hevvens be yer bed: ahmin!”

66

Amen," I reply, smiling in spite of myself, for by this time

I have managed to catch sight of the urchin's grimy countenance, and reading no great indication there of serious accident or illness, continue: "Sit down, sit down, Mrs. Jones; and let me look at the little fellow. Why, Tommy, what is it, my little man? where are you hurt, eh?"

"It's the kittle, doctor dear; sure it's the kittle that's biled over, and scalded him alive, ochone! the darlint! the darlint !"

Here she sways herself to and fro, sobbing, as if her heart would break, from the combined effects of excitement, maternal affection, and gin. "Ochone! ochone! oh, doctor dear, an' won't ye save him?"

"To be sure, Mrs. Jones, to be sure," I answer, reassuringly; "let me see where he is hurt. Take some of these wraps off him, I can't see through all these things."

I am beginning to feel impatient, as the reader will perceive"Come, come; take off these things.'

"Oh, doctor dear, I dursn't; sure it's killed an' murdered ontirely he is, be that bla'guard kittle."

"So you said before-there now!"

By this time I have succeeded in divesting "Tommy" of the mass of shawl, rug, and filthy blanket that envelopes him, and find him quite uninjured.

"There is not a scratch on him, Mrs. Jones," I exclaim, triumphantly, rising from my knee, on which I had been resting during the operation-" not a scratch!"

"The good Lord be praised!" exclaims the woman in accents of profound relief; "sure I didn't stop to look, but picked him up at wonst, an' throwed the first thing I could lay hould on round him, an' run here; sure I knew you was the gentleman would cure him for me, if there was any breath lift in him, at all, at all."

"You're very kind," I reply," Mrs. Jones "-getting rather impatient; "but you can see for yourself that the boy is not hurt -he has had a narrow escape certainly; but he is not injured in the least."

"Ah! thin, many thanks to you, doctor, an' may the

blissins———-”

"There, there, Mrs. Jones; good morning-" I really cannot stand it any longer, but rush behind my counter, and leave the woman to find her way out with her burden by herself, which she presently does, muttering as she goes no end of queer blessings on my head. Well, her intentions are doubtless good, and I fear I am somewhat ungrateful.

Exit Mrs. Jones, at last, leaving unsavoury reminders of her presence behind her; and enter a boy, unknown, the victim of a street accident, and covered with blood, which is pouring from a wound over his left eyebrow.

Follows another scene, which I shall not harrow the feelings of the reader by describing, or attempting to describe, but which is no unfrequent occurrence in my practice, and is, moreover, usually unproductive of pecuniary results, but not of trouble, and oftentimes anxiety.

Exeunt boy and numerous friends; many hundreds more having formed a cordon round the front of the house, and enter another, then another, and yet another unsavoury customer, to the number of more than half a score; who, one by one, depart without leaving much silver on the doctor's counter, but plenty of mud on the surgery floor. At last eleven o'clock arrives, and Charles closes the front-door, for the brougham is waiting to take me round to see my patients. Heigho! I am already tired, and my day's work has scarcely yet begun.

"It will be a great relief," I say to myself, "when I have an assistant; I wonder I never thought of getting one before. I do wish he was here-patience: to-morrow-"

I am off on my rounds after a kiss, as my daily custom is, from each of "the upturned faces of the roses.'

CHAPTER III.

It would be as uninteresting to my readers as distasteful to myself, to recount in full my experience of that day's round of visits-and when I say that day, ab uno disce omnes-one day with me is as like another as-as two peas in a basin of mutton-broth. Nevertheless, is it not a fact, verified by everyday experience, that the major incidents of a lifetime are often strangely crowded together, following, as it were, upon one another's heels in the most unaccountable manner, and hopelessly confusing all one's most elaborate calculations ?-at least, I have frequently found it so, in the case of others, as well as in my own.

As a matter of course, I expect every morning to receive at least six new calls, and sometimes twice that number of messages are scrawled, in a charming variety of handwritings, on my slate; but on that particular morning, the 2nd of March, 187—, I found I had only one. But one new call! astonishing! With the four-and-thirty visits I already had to pay, one more would make but thirty-five, which was unprecedented in my experience, at least since the first year of my residence in Essex Place.

"Doubtless," I said to myself, "I am premature in thinking of engaging an assistant; there will be positively nothing on earth for him to do." But who is ever satisfied? Probably if there had been six or eight messages, instead of one, I should have grumbled and said there were too many.

"Where is this to?" I then inquired, slate in hand, of the page, whose handwriting was somewhat hieroglyphical.

"Rhymer's Rents-a parish case?" I had promised to see a few for an absent friend who held a parochial appointment. "No; who was the messenger? a poor-looking girl, eh?” Then to myself: "Must wait till I have seen Mrs. Smith, and Miss Brown, and Master Robinson, and Mr. Green, and the Rev. Mr. Jones's baby,"—no relation to the female Druid, by the way"and half a dozen more. Nothing very particular, I dare saymust wait, at all events."

I dine-tell it not in Gath, that is to say, west of Temple Bar-at two o'clock; partly on account of the children, for whom my wife thinks, and I agree with her, that a late dinner is unadvisable, and I like to see them all gathered round me; and partly because I have become used to that plebeian hour; and, though I will not admit that I am in the least dyspeptic, I confess that any departure from his usual routine is apt to disagree with me.

Yes, I usually dine at two o'clock; after all, what do I care whether it be known in Gath or not; or, for that matter, in Askelon. We have not the remotest wish or power to force any one to follow our example; and as for changing our habits at anybody's dictation-well, it is not likely.

Dining at two o'clock also pleasantly interrupts the business of the day. I have to go out at eleven, and pay visits until two; by which time I have become hungry, and very often sadly impatient of the oft, too oft, repeated story of old men's, and of old women's ailments, and young children's woes; and the dinner hour-I am off again at three-forins an agreeable diversion, and enables me to return to my duty, if not with pleasure, at least with a certain amount of resignation.

I believe it is an established axiom as old as the days of Horace

"O fortunati mercatores," &c.,

and probably far older, that no person ever was satisfied with his or her occupation, and doubtless never will be; for my own part, I cannot undertake to say more than that I am resigned to mine, which is, I think, admitting a great deal.

On the particular day to which I am alluding, remarkable in my calendar for the very unusual circumstance of my having received a solitary message, and that brought by a poor-looking girl, to visit some one in Rhymer's Rents, an exceedingly impecunious locality in the neighbourhood, I returned home to dinner at my usual hour, having already seen the more influential of my patients, and found that a second message had been de,

livered from the same place: "The lady was very ill; and would the doctor come directly?"

As I have already mentioned, we are all "ladies" and "gentlemen" at the East End, and I did not expect to find any exception to the rule in the foul alley I was required to visit; but I was mistaken.

In this modern Babylon of ours there are acres upon acres of ground covered over with just such buildings as Rhymer's Rentsthat is to say, small, closely-packed, tumble-down tenements fit only for the habitation of bats and owls, but thronged with human beings, terribly poor for the most part, and too often criminal and unhealthy-but what, let me ask, can be expected in the way of morality and hygiene where twenty people, old and young, are congregated together in a space that would be sadly overcrowded with a quarter of that number of inhabitants.

Who the person was who gave the Rents their name, I never heard, nor have I taken any pains to ascertain; at the time of which I write they belonged to a man named Brown-I beg his pardon, Browne-a very rich person, who once wrote me a note beginning: "Mr. Browne presents his complements" (sic) and, gradually ascending, from the third person to the first, ended, "I remain yours truly."

To return to Rhymer's Rents-in a very poor neighbourhood, at no great distance from my house, are two wretched short streets running parallel with each other, and called, respectively, Neptune, and Trident Row. Poor and miserable as the houses are in both these cul-de-sac, they are, nevertheless, highly pretentious dwellings compared with the miserable two-roomed tenemonts with pent-house roofs, built, on the fraudulently abstrated gardens of the "Rows," by Mr. Rhymer, or some one else, who thought poor people had no business to cultivate a taste for flowersthose

"Stars that in earth's firmament do shine."

Two-roomed "houses" with one ten-foot-square apartment up, and another down, stairs-"houses" without any back outlet of any description, door or window-"houses" where the inmates are compelled to deposit their refuse in the twelve foot wide "street" that separates them from their opposite neighbours, are a disgrace to "The Great City" wherein they exist, and a foul blot on her boasted civilisation; let us hope that a time may speedily arrive when they will be swept away.

Reached the entrance to the Rents, which was guarded by three posts, about five feet in height, and three feet apart, the doctor had some difficulty in making his way between the heaps of in. describable refuse and the crowds of grimy children that covered