It was now past midnight: up to this time I had kept my place by the bed-side of the patient, and began to get wearied. I could with safety transfer her care now to one of the old dames, and I determined to do so, and try and obtain some sleep. The house consisted of a double log cabin, of small dimensions, a passage, the full depth of the house, running between the “pens.” As sleep was absolutely required for the preservation of the patient, and the old dames who were gathered around the fire, discoursing of the marvels of their individual experience, bid fair to step over the bounds of proper modulation in their garrulity, I proposed, in such a way that there was no withstanding the appeal, that we should all, except the one nursing, adjourn to the other room. The old ladies acquiesced without a single demurrer, as they were all dying to have a talk with the “young doctor,” who hitherto, absorbed in his patient, had shown but little communicativeness. The male portion of the family had adjourned to the fodder-house to pass the night, so my once fair companions and self had the whole of the apartment to ourselves. Ascertaining by actual experiment that it was sufficiently removed by the passage to prevent ordinary conversation from being audible at the bed-side of the invalid, the old ladies, in despite of my hints of “being very tired,” “really I am very sleepy,” and “I wish I hadn't such a long ride to take to-morrow,” commenced their attack in earnest, by opening a tremendous battery of small talk and queries upon me. The terrible breaches that it made, had the effect of keeping _mine_ on, and I surrendered at discretion to the ladies, _almost_ wishing, I must confess, that they were a bevy of young damsels, instead of a set so antiquated that their only knowledge of love was in seeing their grand-children. Besides, they were only exacting from me the performance of one of the prescribed duties of the country physician, performed by him from time immemorial; and why should they not exact it of me? The doctor of a country settlement was then--they have become so common now as to place it in the power of nearly every planter to own a physician, and consequently they attract little regard--a very important character in the community. Travelling about from house to house, he became the repository of all the news, scandal, and secrets of the neighbourhood, which he was expected to retail out as required for the moral edification of the females of his “beat;” consequently, his coming was an event of great and exciting interest to the womenkind generally.