—­I should be sorry to lose my confidence in Dr. B. Franklin, who seems very much devoted to his business, and whom I mean to consult about some small symptoms I have had lately.  Perhaps it is coming to a new boarding-house.  The young people who come into Paris from the provinces are very apt—­so I have been told by one that knows—­to have an attack of typhoid fever a few weeks or months after their arrival.  I have not been long enough at this table to get well acclimated; perhaps that is it.  Boarding-House Fever.  Something like horse-ail, very likely,—­horses get it, you know, when they are brought to city stables.  A little “off my feed,” as Hiram Woodruff would say.  A queer discoloration about my forehead.  Query, a bump?  Cannot remember any.  Might have got it against bedpost or something while asleep.  Very unpleasant to look so.  I wonder how my portrait would look, if anybody should take it now!  I hope not quite so badly as one I saw the other day, which I took for the end man of the Ethiopian Serenaders, or some traveller who had been exploring the sources of the Niger, until I read the name at the bottom and found it was a face I knew as well as my own.

I must consult somebody, and it is nothing more than fair to give our young Doctor a chance.  Here goes for Dr. Benjamin Franklin.

The young Doctor has a very small office and a very large sign, with a transparency at night big enough for an oyster-shop.  These young doctors are particularly strong, as I understand, on what they call diagnosis,—­an excellent branch of the healing art, full of satisfaction to the curious practitioner, who likes to give the right Latin name to one’s complaint; not quite so satisfactory to the patient, as it is not so very much pleasanter to be bitten by a dog with a collar round his neck telling you that he is called Snap or Teaser, than by a dog without a collar.  Sometimes, in fact, one would a little rather not know the exact name of his complaint, as if he does he is pretty sure to look it out in a medical dictionary, and then if he reads, This terrible disease is attended with vast suffering and is inevitably mortal, or any such statement, it is apt to affect him unpleasantly.

I confess to a little shakiness when I knocked at Dr. Benjamin’s office door.  “Come in!” exclaimed Dr. B. F. in tones that sounded ominous and sepulchral.  And I went in.

I don’t believe the chambers of the Inquisition ever presented a more alarming array of implements for extracting a confession, than our young Doctor’s office did of instruments to make nature tell what was the matter with a poor body.

There were Ophthalmoscopes and Rhinoscopes and Otoscopes and Laryngoscopes and Stethoscopes; and Thermometers and Spirometers and Dynamometers and Sphygmometers and Pleximeters; and Probes and Probangs and all sorts of frightful inquisitive exploring contrivances; and scales to weigh you in, and tests and balances and pumps and electro-magnets and magneto-electric machines; in short, apparatus for doing everything but turn you inside out.