It was really wonderful how the old fellow imposed on the villagers by this simple dodge. Sometimes, after a funeral, when I have called on the bereaved, I have heard the sobbing widow say: "I shall never, never, cease to reproach myself for my dear husband's death. I feel as if I had been his murderer. I ought to have sent for Dr. Tuddlams before." If, however, instead, I called to congratulate a convalescent, I heard from him: "It is a perfect miracle that I am not dead. The doctor gave me up, but he administered what he said might kill or cure, and he is such a genius--he pulled me through. No one else could have done it, not the best doctor in London, so he told me. He alone knew and used this specific. But it was my fault leaving matters so long--I ought to have sent for him before." After all, supposing that the country surgeon were able to set a bone and sew up a wound, it was just as well that he did not employ the astounding medicines and follow the desperate practices in force in the medical profession at the end of last century and the beginning of this. Bleeding with lancet and with leeches, cupping, cauterising, blue-pill, _et toujours_ blue-bill, were in vogue. Starving in fever--water-gruel administered where now is given _extractum carnis_, toast and water in place of beef-tea--the marvel is that our forefathers did not die off like flies under the treatment. I remember saying to a yeoman in Essex one day: "What! nine--ten miles from a doctor?" "Well, sir, yes; it is ten. Thank heaven we all in this parish mostly dies natural deaths." And surely, under the bleeding and salivating and starving _régime_, the grave had more than her due, and the doctor was the High Priest of _Mors Palida_, who brought to the grim goddess her victims. An old sexton at Wakefield parish church was also a headstone cutter. He was not very exact in his orthography, but he had the gift of rhyme, and could compose metrical epitaphs, that, indeed, sometimes, like Orlando's verses, either halted, or had too many feet to run on. One day he was sitting chipping out an inscription on a headstone, when the surgeon rode up. The doctor drew rein and looked at the work of the sexton. "Halloo!" said he. "Peter Priestley, you've made a blot there," meaning a mis-spelling. "Have I, doctor?" answered the clerk, "cover it over. I've covered over many blots o' yours." The doctor rode on without another word.