Certain types in the medical profession are never called anything but “Doc,” except when more profane appellations are required. Dust was a befitting name for the old man, for he appeared to be much dried up. His parchment like skin was drawn tightly over his protruding cheek bones, and his emaciated figure seemed almost ready to blow away. A frayed Prince Albert coat was secured with one button at the waist, and a rusty plug hat was jammed down on the back of his head. These things were evidently intended to impart a professional air, but they completed a sad satire. The Doc looked like a hypocritical old scamp. Much human character, or the lack of it, may be indicated by a hat, and the manner of wearing it, particularly if it is a “plug.” Worn in the ordinary conventional way, a “correct” plug is supposed to provide a roof for a certain kind of dignity, but usually it indicates nothing beyond a mere lack of artistic sensibility. Tipped forward, it suggests sulkiness, obstinacy, and self-complacency—a sort of sporty rowdyism, when worn on one side—and disregard of the rights and opinions of others, when it is tilted back of the ears. Of course the condition and the year of coinage of the plug enter into the equation and complicate it, but even a very shabby plug is an entertaining story teller. To a careful and discriminating student of human folly, it is replete with subtleties. A Fiji Island cannibal, whose only wearing apparel was a plug hat, was once made chief of his tribe on account of it. It was probably as becoming to him as it had been to the spiritual adviser he had eaten. Such dignity and distinction as it was capable of imparting was his. He had attained what is possibly the apotheosis of barbaric head dress of our age. Doc carried two medicine cases under his buggy seat on his professional rounds. One of them was stocked with a dozen large bottles with Latin labels, and the other with small phials containing white pills the size of number six shot. If his patient preferred “Alopathy,” he or she got it with a vengeance. If “Homepathy” was wanted, the smaller receptacle was drawn upon. The “leaders” in the “Alopathy” box were castor oil—calomel, and quinine. Aconite and Belladona–100, and Magnesium Phos–10 occupied the places of honor in the other. Dust had weathered several matrimonial storms, and his last wife was now under the wild flowers in the country cemetery, where the epitaph on the unpretentious stone—erected by her own relatives—was more congratulatory than sorrowful.