As it is the interest of a gentility-monger, and his constant practice, to be attended by a fashionable physician, in order that he may be enabled continually to talk of what Sir Henry thinks of this, and how Sir Henry objects to that, and the opinion of Sir Henry upon t'other, so it is the business of the struggling doctor to be a gentility-monger, with the better chance of becoming one day or other a fashionable physician. Acting on this principle, the poor man must necessarily have a house in a professional neighbourhood, which usually abuts upon a neighbourhood fashionable or exclusive; he must hire a carriage by the month, and be for ever stepping in and out of it, at his own door, keeping it purposely bespattered with mud to show the extent of his visiting acquaintance; he must give dinners to people "who _may_ be useful," and be continually on the look-out for those lucky accidents which have made the fortunes, and, as a matter of course, the _merit_, of so many professional men. He becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society, which gives him the chance of conversing with a lord, and the right of entering a lord's (the president's) house, which is turned into sandwich-shop four times a-year for his reception; this, being the nearest approach he makes to acquaintance with great personages, he values with the importance it deserves. His servants, with famine legibly written on their bones, are assiduous and civil; his wife, though half-starved, is very genteel, and at her dinner parties burns candle-ends from the palace.[48] [48] In a wax-chandler's shop in Piccadilly, opposite St. James's Street, may be seen stumps, or, as the Scotch call them, _doups_ of wax-lights, with the announcement "Candle-ends from Buckingham Palace." These are eagerly bought up by the gentility-mongers, who burn, or it may be, in the excess of their loyalty, _eat_ them! If you pay her a morning visit, you will have some such conversation as follows. "Pray, Mr ----, is there any news to-day?" "Great distress, I understand, throughout the country." "Indeed--the old story, shocking--very.--Pray, have you heard the delightful news? The Princess-Royal has actually cut a tooth!" "Indeed?" "Yes, I assure you; and the sweet little royal love of a martyr has borne it like a hero." "Positively?" "Positively, I assure you; Doctor Tryiton has just returned from a consultation with his friend Sir Henry, upon a particularly difficult case--Lord Scruffskin--case of elephantiasis I think they call it, and tells me that Sir Henry has arrives express from Windsor with the news." "Indeed!" "Do you think, Mr ----, there will be a general illumination?" "Really, madam, I cannot say."