The man had no friends in Holmnook or the neighbourhood; but every evening for fifty years he sate, in the parlour of the chief inn, drinking brandy-and-water, and smoking a "churchwarden." His wife--(his wooing must have been of a queer sort)--a quiet, inoffensive little body, sometimes forgot she was but a woman, and presumed to have an opinion of her own. On such occasions Standish thrashed her soundly with a dog-whip. In consequence of one of these castigations she ran away from her tyrant. Instead of pursuing her, Dr. Standish merely inserted the following advertisement in the county paper:-- "_Dr Standish to all whom it may concern._--Dr Standish's wife having run away, he wants a housekeeper. Dr Standish doesn't want good looks in a woman: but she must know how to hold her tongue and cook a plain joint. He gives ten pounds. Mrs Standish needn't apply--she's too much of a lady." But poor Mrs. Standish did apply, and, what is more, obtained the situation. She and her lord never again had any quarrel that obtained publicity; and so the affair ended more happily than in all probability it would have done had Sir Creswell Creswell's court been then in existence. Standish's practice lay principally amongst the mechanics and little farmers of the neighborhood. Much of his time was therefore spent in riding his two huge lumbering horses about the country. In his old age he indulged himself in a gig (which, out of respect to radical politics, he painted with a flaring yellow paint); but, at the commencement of the present century, the by-roads of Suffolk--now so good that a London brougham drawn by one horse can with ease whisk over the worst of them at the rate of ten miles an hour--were so bad that a doctor could not make an ordinary round on them in a wheeled carriage. Even in the saddle he ran frequent risk of being mired, unless his horse had an abundance of bone and pluck. Standish's mode of riding was characteristic of the man. Straight on he went, at a lumbering six miles an hour trot--dash, dosh, dush!--through the muddy roads, sitting loosely in his seat, heavy and shapeless as a sack of potatoes, looking down at his brown corduroy breeches and his mahogany top-boots (the toes of which pointed in directly opposite directions), wearing a perpetual scowl on his brows, and never either rising in his stirrups or fixing himself to the saddle with his knees. Not a word would he speak to a living creature in the way of civil greeting. "Doctor, good morning to you," an acquaintance would cry out; "'tis a nice day!" "Ugh!" Standish would half grunt, half roar, trotting straight on--dish, dosh, dush! "Stop, doctor, I am out of sorts, and want some physic," would be the second form of address. "Then why the ---- ---- didn't you say so, instead of jawing about the weather?" the urbane physician would say, checking his horse.