I knew a "bright and shining light" in the medical profession who turned out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a massive brow, shaded by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do not know. Throughout the county he had an excellent professional reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost to the community, and to humanity! But his appetite for intoxicating drink knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus'. When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back room. In the latter were his few medicines,--there was no apothecary in town,--and a number of large glass jars, containing excellent anatomical and foetal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside. One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency. "What do you suppose I found him doing?" said Mr. Hotchkiss to me. "Hiding from the snakes in his back room?" I suggested. "No, sir; he had the tremens, and with his coat off, his hair standing every way, his eyes glaring like a demon's, he had his case of forceps strewn over the floor, and was diving at the ends of the clapboard nails, which he called devils, that came through the boards, in the back office." "Ah, there you are! Another devil staring at me!" he shouted; and with the bright, gleaming forceps he dove at a nail, wrenched it from the wall, and flinging it on the floor, he stamped on it, crying, "Another dead devil! Come on. Ah, ha! there you are again!" and he dove at another. When he broke a forceps he flung it on the floor, and caught a new pair. I tried to stop him, but he only accused me of being leagued with his evil majesty to destroy him. [Illustration: A DOCTOR KILLING THE DEVILS.] [Illustration: PAYING FOR HIS WINE.] Another day, after having pawned nearly all his instruments for money with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appetite, he was seen to unseal one of the jars containing a foetal specimen, pour out a quantity of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it down with the avidity of a starving man.