Heroes mischievously gay, Lords of the street, and terrors of the way, Flush'd as they are with folly, youth, and wine. --_Johnson._
Throw physic to the dogs! A pipe--cheroot-- Pilot--and life-preserver--_voila tout!_ A little lecture now and then to boot, A school or hospital to bustle thro', A few hard terms--on easy terms--to keep, Then brown stout, billiards, half-slew'd and sleep! --_Cruikshank's Almanack._
Lindsay Street, where Elsworth took lodgings, was an old thoroughfare at the back of the hospital grounds, and was largely occupied by lodging-houses, in which those students boarded who desired to be handy for their work, and have their fellow-students near neighbours. It was a dull and a grimy old place, but it had many conveniences, and was quite historic as a residence for young medicos,--indeed, it was always held to be a kind of precinct of the hospital. The landladies were for the most part elderly widows with no encumbrances; those who had husbands kept them out of the way, and the students, if they paid up promptly, did pretty much as they liked in their diggings. It has often been a subject of wonder what becomes of the husbands of lodging-house-keeping ladies in the daytime, so seldom do they show their faces to the lodgers. Perhaps the most plausible suggestion is that they spend their time hearing the trials in the law courts, or the police cases. It must be some such persons who are able to devote so much leisure to these matters.
Mrs. Harper occupied Number 15 in this street of students' lodgings, and was one of the oldest and best-known inhabitants. She was a widow, her late husband having been for twenty years night porter at St. Bernard's; and she was sister to the famous Podger. A sharp woman of business, with a keen eye to the pence, she did well at her business, and made an excellent income out of the rooms. Her life had been spent amongst medical men, and not even Podger herself was happier at her work than Mrs. Harper "doing for her gents," as she always called it. Her rooms were decidedly frowzy, and her furniture, which had been picked up at auctions, and was very mixed, was rather dilapidated. What wonder, considering the treatment it received from those who used it! The front parlour, with bedroom at the back, was just now occupied by Jack Mahoney, a merry little fellow, full of good nature, witty, smart at learning, and mad for sprees. "He was always up to his tricks," his landlady said, but she didn't mind 'em, not she, not even when he brought home that steak for his tea, and bade her cook it, and then laughed till his sides must have split, as he told her what it was, and where it came from. "And my new frying-pan spoiled as cost me two-and-ninepence in the Row last week; and as for the plates, and the knives and forks, I sha'n't use 'em agen, you may keep 'em, and I shall put 'em all down in the bill. I wonder when you'll ever leave off your tricks; a nice sort of doctor you'll make! I call it sickening--I do." But Harper, like her sister Podger at the hospital, could be settled. "Hang it all!" cried Mahoney, as he put his feet on the mantel-board, and roared again, "it's worth a whole shopful of crockery to have sold Harper like that. O Jane, sister of the immortal Podger, and you to be had by a _latissimus dorsi_; you, who declared you knew your anatomy as well as we did. O Jane! O Jane! you'll never pass your 'final,' not even in your winding sheet!"