Though "plucked" for the third time, poor Bob was in no way cast down. With him, study at Edinburgh had been all a sham. He had duly "matriculated," and sent the ticket as a proof thereof to his father, who duly paid for classes he never attended, and expensive books he never read. But Bob had always plenty of money then, at least, while I had barely wherewith to pay my class fees and lodgings in Clerk-street, a quiet place near the University.
At last I had the letters "M.D." appended to my name--those magical letters which open the secrets of households, the chambers of the fairest, the purest, and most modest and refined to the perhaps hitherto wild, and it may be "rake-hell" student, who is thereby transformed suddenly into a member of the learned profession, and a grave and responsible member of society.
A comfortable home, board, and washing, with forty pounds per annum whereon to enjoy the luxuries of this life, were the inducements which drew me back to London, where I became duly inducted as assistant to Dr. Crammer, in Bedford-street, Strand, one of those old-fashioned practitioners who always had a lighted crimson bottle flaming over the door by night, and had a dingy little room off the entrance hall, with a skull or two on a side table, snakes in "good spirits" on the mantleshelf, and which by its appurtenances seemed laboratory, surgery, and library in one.
The doctor's practice was more fashionable, however, than one might have expected from his locality, and many a patient of his I visited in the statelier regions of Piccadilly and those pretty villas that face Buckingham Palace and the Green Park. Dr. Crammer was a fussy and pompous little man, with a bald head, an ample paunch, and a general exterior like that of the well-known Mr. Pickwick. He was vain of his aristocratic practice, and more vain of none than of the family of Sir Percival Chalcot, whose eldest daughter was said to be one of the handsomest girls in London, and whose son was in the Household Brigade.
I flattered myself then that I had rather a taking manner and gentlemanly exterior; and that old Crammer was a little vain of me as an assistant, especially after I passed at Apothecaries' Hall--an absurdity necessary then for graduates of the Scotch Universities, who otherwise, in London, were liable to imprisonment.