PASSAGES

FROM THE

DIARY OF A LATE PHYSICIAN.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY STRUGGLES.

CAN any thing be conceived more dreary and disheartening than the prospect before a young London physician, who, without friends or fortune, yet with high aspirations after professional eminence, is striving to weave around him what is technically called "a connexion?" Such was my case. After having exhausted the slender finances allotted me from the funds of a poor but somewhat ambitious family in passing through the usual routine of a college and medical education, I found myself, about my twenty-sixth year, in London,-possessed of about 100l. in cash, a few books, a tolerable wardrobe, an inexhaustible fund of animal spirits, and a wife-a lovely young creature whom I had been absurd enough, some few weeks before, to marry, merely because we loved each other. She was the only daughter of a very worthy fellow-townsman of mine, a widower; whose fortunes, alas! had decayed long before their possessor. Emily was the glory of his age, and, need I add, the pride of my youth; and after having assiduously attended her father

through his last illness, the sole and rich return was his daughter's heart.

I must own that when we found ourselves fairly housed in the mighty metropolis of England, with so poor an exchequer, and the means of replenishing it so remote and contingent, we were somewhat startled at the boldness of the step we had taken. "Nothing venture, nothing have," however, was my maxim; and I felt supported by that unaccountable conviction which clings to all in such circumstances as mine, up to the very pinching moment, but no longer-that there must be thousands of ways of getting a livelihood to which we can turn at a moment's warning. And then the swelling thought of being the architect of one's own fortunes! As, however, daily drafts began to diminish my 100l., my spirits faltered a little. I discovered that I might indeed as well

-lie pack'd in mine own grave,"

as continue in London without money or the means of getting it; and, after resolving endless schemes, the only conceivable mode of doing so seemed by calling in the generous assistance of the Jews. My father had fortunately effected a policy on my life for 2000l. at an early period, on which some fourteen premiums had been paid; and this available security, added to the powerful influence of a young nobleman to whom I had rendered some service at college, enabled me to succeed in wringing a loan from old Amos L- of 3000l., at the trifling interest of fifteen per cent., payable by way of redeemable annuity. It was with fear and trembling that I called myself master of this large sum, and with the utmost diffidence that I could bring myself to exercise what the lawyers would call acts of ownership on it. As, however, there was no time to lose, I took a respectable house in C—— street, west—