COUNTRYMAN.—­Then why doant’ee tell us?

RHUBARB PILL.—­It’s not professional.  Besides, it’s quite requisite that I should “feel the patient’s pulse,” or I might make the dose too powerful, and so—­

COUNTRYMAN.—­Get the sack, Mr. Doctor.

RHUBARB PILL (aside).—­Blow the trumpet, Balaam.

BALAAM.—­Too-too-tooit—­tooit-too-too!

RHUBARB PILL.—­And so do more harm than good.  Besides, I should require to have the “necessary consultations” over the dinner-table.  Diet does a great deal—­not that I care about the “loaves and fishes”—­but patients are always more tractable after a good dinner.  Now there’s an old lady in these parts—­

COUNTRYMAN.—­What, my old missus?

RHUBARB PILL.—­The same.  She’s in a desperate way.

COUNTRYMAN.—­Ees.  Dr. Russell says it’s all owing to your nasty nosdrums.

RHUBARB PILL.—­Doctor Russell’s a—­never mind.  I say she is very bad, and
I AM the only man that can cure her.

COUNTRYMAN—­Then out wi’it, doctor—­what will?

RHUBARB PILL.—­Wait till I’m regularly called in.

COUNTRYMAN.—­But suppose she dies in the meantime?

RHUBARB PILL.—­That’s her fault.  I won’t do anything by proxy.  I must direct my own administration, appoint my own nurses for the bed-chamber, have my own herbalists and assistants, and see Doctor Russell’s “purge” thrown out of the window.  In short, I must be regularly called in.  Balaam, blow the trumpet.

[Balaam blows the trumpet, the crowd shout, and the Doctor bows gracefully, with one hand on his heart and the other in his breeches pocket.  At the end of the applause he commences singing].

  I am called Doctor Pill, the political quack,
    And a quack of considerable standing and note;
  I’ve clapp’d many a blister on many a back,
    And cramm’d many a bolus down many a throat,
  I have always stuck close, like the rest of my tribe,
    And physick’d my patient as long as he’d pay;
  And I say, when I’m ask’d to advise or prescribe,
    “You must wait till I’m call’d in a regular way.”

  Old England has grown rather sickly of late,
    For Russell’s reduced her almost to a shade;
  And I’ve honestly told him, for nights in debate,
    He’s a quack that should never have follow’d the trade. 
  And, Lord! how he fumes, and exultingly cries,
    “Were you in my place, Pill, pray what would you say?”
  But I only reply, “If I am to advise,
    I shall wait till I’m call’d in a regular way.”

  It’s rather “too bad,” if an ignorant elf,
    Who has caught a rich patient ’twere madness to kill,
  Should have all the credit, and pocket the pelf,
    Whilst you are requested to furnish the skill. 
  No! no! amor patriae’s a phrase I admire,
    But I own to an amor that stands in its way;
  And if England should e’er my assistance require,
    She must—­