frame reasons for concealment. At others—but
it is useless to repeat the absurdities and castle
buildings which were generated in my brain from mystery.
My airy fabrics would at last disappear, and leave
me in all the misery of doubt and abandoned hope.
Mr Cophagus, when the question was sometimes put to
him, would say, “Good boy—very good
boy—don’t want a father.”
But he was wrong, I did want a father; and every day
the want became more pressing, and I found myself
continually repeating the question, “Who is
my father?”
Very much puzzled with
a new Patient, nevertheless take my degree
at fifteen as an M.D.;
and what is still more acceptable, I pocket
the fees.
The departure of Mr Brookes, of course, rendered me
more able to follow up with Timothy my little professional
attempts to procure pocket-money; but independent
of these pillages by the aid of pills, and making drafts
upon our master’s legitimate profits, by the
assistance of draughts from his shop, accident shortly
enabled me to raise the ways and means in a more rapid
manner. But of this directly.
In the meantime I was fast gaining knowledge; every
evening I read surgical and medical books, put into
my hands by Mr Cophagus, who explained whenever I
applied to him, and I soon obtained a very fair smattering
of my profession. He also taught me how to bleed,
by making me, in the first instance, puncture very
scientifically, all the larger veins of a cabbage-leaf,
until well satisfied with the delicacy of my hand,
and the precision of my eye, he wound up his instructions
by permitting me to breathe a vein in his own arm.
“Well,” said Timothy, when he first saw
me practising, “I have often heard it said,
there’s no getting blood out of a turnip; but
it seems there is more chance with a cabbage.
I tell you what, Japhet, you may try your hand upon
me as much as you please, for two-pence a go.”
I consented to this arrangement, and by dint of practising
on Timothy over and over again, I became quite perfect.
I should here observe, that my anxiety relative to
my birth increased every day, and that in one of the
books lent me by Mr Cophagus, there was a dissertation
upon the human frame, sympathies, antipathies, and
also on those features and peculiarities most likely
to descend from one generation to another. It
was there asserted, that the nose was the facial
feature most likely to be transmitted from father
to son. As I before have mentioned, my nose was
rather aquiline; and after I had read this book, it
was surprising with what eagerness I examined the
faces of those whom I met; and if I saw a nose upon
any man’s face, at all resembling my own, I
immediately would wonder and surmise whether that person
could be my father. The constant dwelling upon
the subject at last created a species of monomania,
and a hundred times a day I would mutter to myself,
"Who is my father?" indeed, the very bells,
when they rung a peal, seemed, as in the case of Whittington,
to chime the question, and at last I talked so much
on the subject to Timothy, who was my Fidus Achates,
and bosom friend, that I really believe, partial as
he was to me, he wished my father at the devil.
