Anatomists divide their science, as well as their subjects, into
fragments. Osteology treats of the skeleton, myology of the muscles,
angiology of the blood vessels, splanchology the digestive organs or
department of the interior, and so on.
People tell pretty tough stories of the young carvists who study anatomy
on subjects taken from life. I would repeat a few of them here, but they
are productive of insomnia, so I will not give them.
I visited a matinee of this kind once for a short time, but I have not
been there since, When I have a holiday now, the idea of spending it in
the dissecting-room of a large and flourishing medical college does not
occur to me.
[Illustration: 0057]
I never could be a successful surgeon, I fear. While I have no
hesitation about mutilating the English, I have scruples about cutting
up other nationalities. I should always fear, while pursuing my studies,
that I might be called upon to dissect a friend, and I could not do
that. I should like to do anything that would advance the cause of
science, but I should not want to form the habit of dissecting people,
lest some day I might be called upon to dissect a friend for whom I had
a great attachment, or some creditor who had an attachment for me.
MR. SWEENEY'S CAT.
Robert Ormsby Sweeney is a druggist of St. Paul, and though a recent
chronological record reveals the fact that he is a direct descendant of
a sure-enough king, and though there is mighty good purple, royal blood
in his veins that dates back where kings used to have something to do to
earn their salaries, he goes right on with his regular business, selling
drugs at the great sacrifice which druggists will make sometimes in
order to place their goods within the reach of all.
As soon as I learned that Mr. Sweeney had barely escaped being a crowned
head, I got acquainted with him and tried to cheer him up, and I told
him that people wouldn't hold him in any way responsible, and that as
it hadn't shown itself in his family for years he might perhaps finally
wear it out.
He is a mighty pleasant man to meet, anyhow, and you can have just as
much fun with him as you could with a man who didn't have any royal
blood in his veins. You could be with him for days on a fishing trip and
never notice it at all.
But I was going to speak more in particular about Mr. Sweeney's cat.
Mr. Sweeney had a large cat, named Dr. Mary Walker, of which he was very
fond. Dr. Mary Walker remained at the drug store all the time, and was
known all over St. Paul as a quiet and reserved cat. If Dr. Mary Walker
took in the town after office hours, nobody seemed to know anything
about it. She would be around bright and cheerful the next morning and
attend to her duties at the store just as though nothing whatever had
happened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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