"Perhaps it was two years afterwards--I was staying at the B. Hotel, Maine--when I heard a deal of talk about a great doctor then in town. After dinner the first day, I noticed a man sauntering leisurely from the dining-hall in embroidered slippers, white silk stockings, black pants, gaudy dressing-gown, with long hair falling down over his shoulders. I thought I recognized that face. I approached him after a while, and called him by name. "'What? Why, I think you are mistaken. I do not know you, sir,' he stammered; and then I knew he had recognized me. "'O, yes; I am Dayton. You remember you were our pianist once in a strait, in S.' "'O, ah! Come up to my room,' he said, leading the way. "I followed, when he told me he was doing a good thing at the practice of medicine about the principal towns of the state, and begged I would say nothing about his former occupation. He stated to me that he had been to Europe, and had been studying medicine meantime, which I have since ascertained was entirely untrue." And this was the fellow over whom the town was running wild. The idea of some men trying to become good physicians is as ridiculously absurd as Horace Greeley's farming, or trying to ascertain if "cundurango is explosive." The requisite qualities are not in them. They may keep along a few years, or possibly, in communities where there is no competition, succeed in making the people believe they are as good as the common run, and thus succeed on brass instead of brains. Some of these brainless travelling impostors employ a female or two to precede them from place to place, and make diligent inquiry when the great doctor who performed such marvellous cures in some adjoining town mentioned was coming there. Thus putting it in the shape of an inquiry, it was less likely to excite suspicion. Two females--one an elderly, lady-like looking woman, the other younger, and anything but lady-like--travelled for a doctor, on a salary, during the summer and autumn of 1868. A lady whose occupation took her from town to town, seeing the two females at various hotels where the doctor was advertised, inveigled the younger one into the confession, in her bad temper, and thus I got my evidence. Another travels on his hair; another on his face; and a fourth on his free advice and treatment; while a fifth succeeds by absurdity of dress. [Illustration] XIV. SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE. "History, so warm on meaner themes, Is cold on this."--COWPER'S TASK. "Let no one say that his task is o'er, That bonds of earth are for him no more, Until by some kind or holy deed His name from forgetfulness is freed; Until by words from his lips or pen, Dying, he's 'missed' from the ranks of men." ALICE LEE.