Paying a visit, in my earlier days, to the lady of a good old country alderman of a borough in Hertfordshire, she, after many aukward apologies for the indelicacy of the subject, tremblingly told me, “she had been very uneasy for some days, with a violent heat in her _firmament_.”—By way of suppressing those risible emotions in my disposition I have before described, I, for a moment, changed the subject, by enquiring the health of her husband; to which she replied, with thanks, “he was exceedingly well, but gone to make an _exerescence_ into the country;” plunged deeper in difficulty, and nearer the _laugh_ than before, which was now become hard to suppress, I applied myself to her snuff-box, then on the table, and passing a few encomiums on its neatness, she said, it was very much admired, being a _gypsey’s pimple_ set in _pinch-gut_. You will, no doubt, be now prepared for such unexpected misapplication of words, such _sublimity of expression_, and regulate the rigidity of your _frontal_ muscles accordingly; when called to a patient, let your personal address and behaviour be modelled entirely by the state of his _property_; if he is _your superior_ in rank and condition, every action of yours must denote it most strikingly;—you _approach_ with _respect_—you _dictate_ with _submission_—your mildness and _affected penetration_ must be perceptible in all your enquiries, making the most scrupulous observations how far you seem to gain upon the _credulity_ and good opinion of your subject, taking leave with all those attracting expressions of tenderness and sympathy, (highly tinctured with respect) that may give your patient a favourable idea of the _integrity_, it can never be your _interest_ to possess. On the contrary, when your advice and assistance is required to a patient, whose feelings are equally wounded by bodily affliction and the barbed arrow of adversity, you may safely reverse the whole mode of behaviour, and put into practice your personal pride, even to perfect impudence. This will be in many respects a consistency of conduct; it will be convincing them, as you have nothing to hope from their _affluence_, you have certainly nothing to fear from their _poverty_.