The secret of success is like the elixir of life, inasmuch as that precious balsam used to be eagerly sought after by countless thousands; and because, also like the elixir, it continually eludes the pursuer. One man succeeds. How? He does not know, and he does not inquire. A thousand others, who think they are as good, fail. Why? They cannot discover. But each of the thousand failures is ready to show you a thousand reasons why this one man has succeeded. First of all, he has really not succeeded; secondly, his success is grossly exaggerated; thirdly, it is a cheap success--the unsuccessful are especially contemptuous of a cheap success--they would not, themselves, condescend to a cheap success; fourthly, it is a success arrived at by tortuous, winding, crooked arts, which make the unsuccessful sick and sorry to contemplate--who would desire a success achieved by climbing up the back stairs? If a man writes, and succeeds in his writings, so that ordinary people flock to read him, he succeeds by his vulgarity. Or, he succeeds by his low tastes--who, that respects himself, would pander to the multitude? Or, he succeeds by vacuity, fatuity, futility, stupidity--what self-respecting writer would sink to the level of the fatuous and vacuous? He succeeds with an A, because he is Asinine; with a B, because he is Bestial; with a C, because he is Contemptible; and so on through the alphabet. Similar reasons are assigned when a man succeeds as a Painter, a Sculptor, a Preacher, a Lawyer. Now, Sir Robert Steele is one of the most successful physicians of the day. His success is easily understood and readily accounted for, on the principles just laid down, by those of his profession who have not by any means achieved the same popularity. He humours his patients--every one knows that; he has a soft voice and a warm hand--he makes ignoble profit out of both. Above all, he asks his patients--some of them--to the most delightful dinners possible. The latter charge has a foundation in fact: he does ask a few of his more fortunate patients to dinner. More than this, he gives them a dinner much too artistic for most of them to understand. To bring Art into a menu, to invent and build up a dinner which shall be completely artistic in every part, a harmonious whole; one course leading naturally to the next; a dinner of one colour in many tints; the wine gurgling like part of an orchestra, is a gift within the powers of very few. Sir Robert's reputation as a physician is justly, at least, assisted by his reputation as a great poetic creator of the harmonious dinner.