patient--or rather an employer--who not only paid him nothing, but consistently refused to follow his advice, and medicined herself with nostrums. It was sufficient for him to sit by her, to listen to her harangues--she made nothing of talking incessantly for twelve hours at one sitting--and to endure the plentiful abuse of doctors in general, and himself in particular, which was the staple of her conversation: to have been at length sent away with the curt intimation that he ‘had better take himself off,’ seems to have aroused no resentment in this much-enduring man. Certainly, he mentions that he was, personally and professionally, subjected constantly to stinging insults, and that he suffered from her tyranny; but it would not appear that he ever grew restive under these repeated indignities. Lady Hester was, indeed, no mealy-mouthed blue-stocking. She had a rasping tongue, used on occasion language rather more free than welcome, and had the voice of a drill-sergeant. Added to these qualifications, she possessed biceps of unusual development, and used her muscles with effect on the miserable men and women Arabs over whom she ruled with the rigour of a Draco or a military martinet. She rather prided herself on the straight and forcible blows she could deliver, and lost no opportunity of demonstrating her prowess upon her trembling slaves. Her ‘physician’ remarks that ‘from her manner towards people it would have seemed that she was the only person in creation privileged to abuse and to command; others had nothing else to do but to obey and not to think. She was haughty and overbearing, impatient of control, born to rule, and more at her ease when she had a hundred persons to govern than when she had only ten.... Never was any one so fond of wielding weapons, and of boasting of her capability of using them upon a fit occasion, as she was.’ She kept a kind of armoury in her bedroom, and slept with a steel mace beside her, a battle-axe and an assortment of daggers, poniards, and other murderous cutlery of that description lying within easy reach; and, if she did not actually use them upon the cowering wretches with whom she was surrounded, was probably owing rather to their care in not giving offence to this terrible she-devil than to any forbearance on her part. She stunned her _entourage_ by her unusual combination of masculine and feminine powers of offence and defence. She could storm and rage, could nag and scold with the most proficient virago, and fists or mace were ready when those more womanlike resources were exhausted.