Goyle laughed and stepped back a pace or two. "Why, on account of my nonsense just now? That was all guff; I didn’t mean it. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to condemn the whole of creation, and I talk that way when my mind is too dull to act. Why, I am going out now to knock an eye tooth out of the wolf." "And you didn’t mean what you said about old men?" "Not a word of it." "Why did you happen to speak of my father?" "Merely to refute what I had said about old men in general. Well, so long." Howard went into the doctor’s office, as musty a den as ever a fox inhabited. The physician was an old man, who had no future and who prescribed in the past. During the best years of his life he had dozed or talked under the influence of opium, so given to harmless fabrication when awake that it followed him into his slumber, snoring a lie; now cured of the habit but not of the evil it had wrought. When Howard entered the old man was reading a medical journal of 1849, and he glanced up disappointed to see the visitor looking so well. He had met Howard many a time, but his memory was short. "Ah, come in, sir. Have a seat. You are—let me see. "My office is just across the hall." "Yes, yes, I remember. You are in the—the brokerage business. And your name is—" "I am trying to be a lawyer. Elbridge is my name." "Of course it is. I used to know your father—was called in consultation just before he died." "Then it must have been since I left the house this morning." "Ah, let me see. Elbridge—the Judge. I’m wrong, of course. It was Elsworth. How is your father?" "That’s what I wanted to talk about, and I am sorry that you do not recall him more vividly. I wanted to ask your opinion." "Why, now I know him as well as I know myself. What is it you wish to consult me about? His health?" "Well, I hardly know how to get at it. You know he has been a very busy man—working day and night for years; and I wanted to ask if a sudden breaking off isn’t dangerous—that is, not exactly dangerous, but likely to induce a change in disposition?" The doctor looked wise, with his hand flat upon the medical journal, and as it had been printed in the drowsy afternoon of a slow day, seemed to inspire caution against a quick opinion. "I hold, and have held for years," said he, "that a complete revolution in a man’s affairs, sudden riches or sudden poverty—the er—the withdrawing of vital forces necessary to a continuous strain, is a shock to the system, and therefore deleterious. It is unquestionably a fact, not only known to the medical fraternity, but to ordinary observation, that incentive in the aged is a sort of continuance of youth, in other words, to make myself perfectly clear, the impetus of youth when unchecked, goes far into old age—when the pursuit has not been changed; and therefore a sudden halting is bad for the system. Is your father’s health impaired?"