Prudence would order a physician, endowed with a heart, to treat it in the same way as Dr. Glynn thought a cucumber ought to be dressed--to slice it very thin, pepper it plentifully, pour upon it plenty of the best vinegar, and then--throw it away. A doctor has quite enough work on his hands to keep the affections of his patients in check, without having to mount guard over his own emotions. Thackeray says that girls make love in the nursery, and practise the arts of coquetry on the page-boy who brings the coals upstairs--a hard saying for simple young gentlemen triumphing in the possession of a _first_ love. The writer of these pages could point to a fair dame, who enjoys rank amongst the highest and wealth equal to the station assigned her by the heralds, who not only aimed tender glances, and sighed amorously to a young waxen-faced, blue-eyed apothecary, but even went so far as to write him a letter proposing an elopement, and other merry arrangements, in which a carriage, everlastingly careering over the country at the heels of four horses, bore a conspicuous part. The silly maiden had, like Dinah, "a fortune in silvyer and gold," amounting to £50,000, and her blue-eyed Adonis was twice her age; but fortunately he was a gentleman of honour, and, without divulging the mad proposition of the young lady, he induced her father to take her away for twelve months' change of air and scene. Many years since the heroine of this little episode, after she had become the wife of a very great man, and the mother of children who bid fair to become ornaments to their illustrious race, expressed her gratitude cordially to this Joseph of the doctors, for his magnanimity in not profiting by the absurd fancies of a child, and the delicacy with which he had taken prompt measures for her happiness; and, more recently, she manifested her good will to the man who had offered her what is generally regarded as the greatest insult a woman can experience, by procuring a commission in the army for his eldest son. The embarrassments Sir John Eliot suffered under from the emotional overtures of his fair patients are well known. St. John Long himself had not more admirers amongst the _élite_ of high-born English ladies. The king had a strong personal dislike to Sir John,--a dislike possibly heightened by a feeling that it was sheer impudence in a doctor to capture without an effort the hearts of half the prettiest women amongst his subjects--and then shrug his shoulders with chagrin at his success. Lord George Germain had hard work to wring a baronetcy out of his Majesty for this victim of misplaced affection. "Well," said the king, at last grudgingly promising to make Eliot a baronet--"my Lord, since you desire it, let it be; but remember he shall not be my physician." "No, sir," answered Lord George--"he shall be your Majesty's baronet, and my physician."