You have heard of Longtown, which is a neat, respectable-looking, and remarkably clean little town in Cumberland, on the banks of the Esk, near to what is called Solway Moss, and sometimes spoken of as the first or last town in England, in the same manner as Coldstream is mentioned as the first or last town in Scotland. Well, there dwelt in Longtown a respectable widow, named Musgrave. She derived an income of about eighty pounds a-year from a property that had been bequeathed to her in the West Indies. She had an only son, whose name was Robert, and who, after a respectable education in his native place, was bound as an apprentice to a medical practitioner in Carlisle. He afterwards attended the classes in Edinburgh; but, before he had taken out all the necessary tickets, and before he had obtained the diploma or qualification which was to enable him to use the word "surgeon" after his name, something went wrong about the property that was bequeathed to his mother in the West Indies; her remittances ceased, and, after a tedious lawsuit, it was swallowed up altogether. She was left in poverty--in utter destitution. The misfortune fell upon her heavily; she drooped, pined, mourned, and died; and Robert Musgrave, still under twenty, was left without money and without friends. His talents, however, had excited the notice of several of the professors under whom he had studied; and they, acquiring a knowledge of his circumstances, and feeling an interest in his fate, enabled him to take out his certificate as a member of the College of Surgeons. He now, with high hopes, and, I need not say, a low pocket, commenced practice as a country surgeon in a small village on the Borders. It was a young man's dream. A surgeon in a country village, and especially a young one, is generally the worst paid man in it. The war between poverty and the necessity of appearing respectable never ceases. The clergyman, be he churchman or dissenter, has a certain income, be it less or more; but the surgeon lives between the hand and the mouth; and he can hardly, considering his avocation, in Christian benevolence, pray for "daily bread." Such a prayer would be something akin to a gravedigger's for an east wind or a "green Christmas," which, as the adage hath it, "maketh a fat kirkyard."