第47章 CHAPTER XII(5)

I've know'd this one sence she was two or three year old; but this gal ain't Myrtle Hazard no longer,--she's bewitched into somethin' different. I'll tell ye what, Mr. Gridley; you get old Dr. Hurlbut to come and see her once a day for a week, and get the young doctor to stay away. I'll resk it. She 'll have some dreadful tantrums at fust, but she'll come to it in two or three, days."Master Byles Gridley groaned in spirit. He had come to this village to end his days in peace, and here he was just going to make a martyr of himself for the sake of a young person to whom he was under no obligation, except that he had saved her from the consequences of her own foolish act, at the expense of a great overturn of all his domestic habits. There was no help for it. The nurse was right, and he must perform the disagreeable duty of letting the Doctor know that he was getting into a track which might very probably lead to mischief, and that he must back out as fast as he could.

At 2 P. M. Gifted Hopkins presented the following note at the Doctor's door:

"Mr. Byles Gridley would be much obliged to Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut if he would call at his study this evening.""Odd, is n't it, father, the old man's asking me to come and see him?

Those old stub-twist constitutions never want patching.""Old man! old man! Who's that you call old,--not Byles Gridley, hey? Old! old! Sixty year, more or less! How old was Floyer when he died, Fordyce? Ninety-odd, was n't it? Had the asthma though, or he'd have lived to be as old as Dr. Holyoke,--a hundred year and over. That's old. But men live to be a good deal more than that sometimes. What does Byles Gridley want of you, did you say?""I'm sure I can't tell, father; I'll go and find out." So he went over to Mrs. Hopkins's in the evening, and was shown up into the study.

Master Gridley treated the Doctor to a cup of such tea as bachelors sometimes keep hid away in mysterious caddies. He presently began asking certain questions about the grand climacteric, which eventful period of life he was fast approaching. Then he discoursed of medicine, ancient and modern, tasking the Doctor's knowledge not a little, and evincing a good deal of acquaintance with old doctrines and authors.

He had a few curious old medical books in his library, which he said he should like to show Dr. Hurlbut.

There, now! What do you say to this copy of Joannes de Ketam, Venice, 1522? Look at these woodcuts,--the first anatomical pictures ever printed, Doctor, unless these others of Jacobus Berengarius are older! See this scene of the plague-patient, the doctor smelling at his pouncet-box, the old nurse standing square at the bedside, the young nurse with the bowl, holding back and turning her head away, and the old burial-hag behind her, shoving her forward, a very curious book, Doctor, and has the first phrenological picture in it ever made. Take a look, too, at my Vesalius,--not the Leyden edition, Doctor, but the one with the grand old original figures,--so good that they laid them to Titian. And look here, Doctor, I could n't help getting this great folio Albinus, 1747,--and the nineteenth century can't touch it, Doctor,--can't touch it for completeness and magnificence, so all the learned professors tell me! Brave old fellows, Doctor, and put their lives into their books as you gentlemen don't pretend to do nowadays. And good old fellows, Doctor,--high-minded, scrupulous, conscientious, punctilious,--remembered their duties to man and to woman, and felt all the responsibilities of their confidential relation to families. Did you ever read the oldest of medical documents,--the Oath of Hippocrates?"The Doctor thought he had read it, but did not remember much about it.