The Recollections of Geoffrey HamlynKingsley, Henry
General
The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn
Kingsley, Henry
Australia -- Fiction; England -- Fiction
The drunken surgeon, if, to use parliamentary language, he will allow
me to call him so, was of course underneath the others; but, being a
Londoner, and consequently knowing the use of his fists, ere he went
down delivered a "one, two," straight from the shoulder in our poor
dear Doctor's face, and gave him a most disreputable black eye, besides
cutting his upper lip open. This our Doctor, being, you must remember,
a foreigner, and not having the rules of the British Ring before his
eyes, resented by getting on the top of him, taking him round the
throat, and banging the back of his head against the brick floor of the
passage, until he began to goggle his eyes and choke. Meanwhile the
sawyer, exhilarated beyond measure in his drunken mind at having raised
a real good promising row, having turned on his back, lay procumbent
upon the twain, and kicking everything soft or human he came across
with his heels, struck up "The Bay of Biscay, Oh," until he was dragged
forth by two of his friends; and, being in a state of wild excitement,
ready to fight the world, hit his own mate a violent blow in the eye,
and was only quieted by receiving a sound thrashing, and being placed
in a sitting posture in the verandah of the public house, from which he
saw Doctor Mulhaus come forth from the surgeon's with rumpled feathers,
but triumphant.
I am deeply grieved to have recorded the above scene, but I could not
omit it. Having undertaken to place the character of that very noble
gentleman, Doctor Mulhaus, before my readers, I was forced not to omit
this. As a general rule, he was as self-contained, as calm and as
frigid as the best Englishman among us. But under all this there was,
to speak in carefullyselected scientific language, a substratum of
pepper-box, which has been apparent to me on more than one occasion. I
have noticed the above occasion per force. Let the others rest in
oblivion. A man so true, so wise, so courteous, and so kindly, needs
not my poor excuses for having once in a way made a fool of himself. He
will read this, and he will be angry with me for a time, but he knows
well that I, like all who knew him, say heartily, God bless you, old
Doctor!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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