“Oh no; I’ll get on well enough. I should feel too much like a swell in a whole new suit.” In truth, the good doctor had not experienced that luxury for years, and his appearance was not a great many removes from the condition known as “seedy;” but thanks to Mrs. Buzzell’s devotion, he was always kept supplied with elegant linen and hand-knit stockings for summer and winter, which he always wore long and gartered above the knee. In gloves he was somewhat extravagant, for he held that a physician’s hands should be preserved sensitive and fine to the touch; especially when he filled the office of surgeon as well as physician, as most country doctors do. Dr. Forest’s medicaments in all ordinary cases were of the most simple kind, and his rival, Dr. Delano, and even old Dr. Gallup, were in much better repute at the druggists than he was, for his heart was always with the poor, and to these he generally furnished most of the medicines himself. He understood well the weakness of uncultivated people, shown nowhere more signally than in their faith in the potency of mysterious drugs; and when he called for “two glasses, two-thirds filled with fresh water,” he did it with an assumption of certainty that convinced his patient that life or death might be in those words, “two-thirds;” and when he emptied a harmless powder, perhaps of magnesia or carbonate of soda, into one and stirred it carefully, and then some other equally innocuous substance into the other glass, stirring each alternately, it was with an air that said plainly, “Beware how you trifle with the time and the manner of taking these!”