"Well, perhaps so, perhaps so," said the old gentleman; "and I daresay it's quite-right, only--well, never mind. Well, Chudleigh, it's a pleasant thing for me, remembering you, as I said, a great hulking lad when you first came to lecture, to see you now carrying away every thing before you. I don't know that you're quite wise in giving Whittaker your practice, for he's a deep designing dog; and you can tell as well as I do how a word dropped deftly here and there may steal away a patient before the doctor knows where he is, especially with old ladies and creatures of that sort. But, however, it's the slack time of year,--that's one thing to be said,--when everybody that's any body is safe to be out of town. Ah, by the way, that reminds me! I was glad to see by the _Morning Post_ that you had had some very good cases last season." "The _Morning Post!_--some very good cases! What do you mean?" "I mean, I saw your name as attending several of the nobility: 'His lordship's physician, Dr. Wilmot, of Charles Street,' et cetera; that kind of thing, you know." "O, do you congratulate me on those? I certainly pulled young Lord Coniston, Lord Broadwater's son, through a stiff attack of typhus; but as I would have done the same for his lordship's porter's child, I don't see the value of the paragraph. By the way, I shouldn't wonder if I were indebted to the porter for the paragraph." "Never mind, my dear Chudleigh, whence the paragraph comes, but be thankful you got it. 'Sweet,' as Shakespeare says,--'sweet are the uses of advertisement;' and our profession is almost the only one to which they are not open. The inferior members of it, to be sure, do a little in the way of the red lamp and the vaccination gratis; but when you arrive at any eminence you must not attempt any thing more glaring than galloping about town in your carriage, and getting your name announced in the best society." "The best society!" echoed Wilmot with an undisguised sneer. "My dear Sir Saville, you seem to have taken a craze for Youth, Beauty, and High Life, and to exalt them as gods for your idolatry." "For _my_ idolatry! No, my boy, for yours. I don't deny that when I was in the ring, I did my best to gain the approbation of all three, and that I succeeded I may say without vanity. But I'm out of it now, and I can only give counsel to my juniors. But that my counsel is good worldly wisdom, Chudleigh, you may take the word of an old man who has--well, who has, he flatters himself, made his mark in life." The old gentleman was so evidently sincere in this exposition of his philosophy, that Wilmot repressed the smile that was rising to his lips, and said: