One might say, with some propriety, that these characters--travelling doctors--should have been classed under the heading of our first chapter, as "humbugs;" but if we should put all under that head that belong there, O, where would the chapter end? As "all is not gold that glitters," so neither, on the other hand, is there anything so bad that no virtue can be found in it. No heart is so utterly depraved as to prevent any good thought or deed from emanating therefrom, though sometimes the good is quite imperceptible to us short-sighted mortals. As the majority of physicians "turned" out of our medical colleges, or of those in practice in our cities, are unfit to have intrusted to their care the health and lives of our families, friends, or ourselves, so the majority of travelling doctors are to be reckoned equally untrustworthy; no more so. If the blessed Saviour should return to earth, and travel from town to city, as he did eighteen hundred years ago, healing the sick, I really think there would be a less number believing in him now than then. Less gratitude for his marvellous cures there could not be; for then some of the miserable wretches, whom he healed free of charge, did not so much as return him thanks. This may be said of some of our patients at this day. Let a medical man of ever so great reputation travel, and he is lost. A band of angels, on a healing mission, would stand no chance with a people who only expect humbugs to visit them. The Shakspearian inquiry would at once and repeatedly be put,-- "How chance it they travel? Their _residence_, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways!" Let us view a few travelling doctors through the _public_ eye:-- "So shall I dare to give him shape and hue, And bring his mazy-running tricks to view; From humbug's minions catch the scattered rays, That in one focus they may brightly blaze. "I'd give our (nameless) knight, before he starts, A tireless mind, where never Conscience smarts; An oily tongue, which word should never speak To call a blush to Satan's brazen cheek; With, yet, a power of lungs the weak to move, Which lung-quiescent ... might approve; A changing face, which e'en might Homer feign, A ton of brass for every ounce of brain. "Then launch him forth, right cunningly to rage Through the thin shams of this enlightened age; To tell the people they are lords of earth, And pick their pockets while he lauds their worth; Drug men with folly, which no clime engrosses, And sense deal out in homeopathic doses; And making goodness to his projects bend, With all right aims an ultra spirit blend. * * * * *