In ordinary cases the best doctor you can have is mother or grandmother, who has piloted through the rocks of infantile disease a whole family.  She has salve for almost everything, and knows how to bind a wound or cool an inflammation.  But if mother be dead or you are afflicted with a maternal ancestor that never knew anything practical, and never ill, better in severe cases have the doctor right away.  You say that it is expensive to do that, while a book on the treatment of diseases will cost you only a dollar and a half.  I reply that in the end it is very expensive for an inexperienced man to be his own doctor; for in addition to the price of the book there are the undertaker’s expenses.

Some of the younger persons at the table laughed at the closing sentence of Wiseman, when Doctor Heavyasbricks looked up, put down his knife and said:  “My young friends, what are you laughing at?  I see no cause of merriment in the phrase ‘undertaker’s expenses.’  It seems to me to be a sad business.  When I think of the scenes amid which an undertaker moves, I feel more like tears than hilarity.”

Quizzle.—­If you are opposed, Governor Wiseman, to one’s being his own doctor, what do you think of every man’s being his own lawyer?

Wiseman.—­I think just as badly of that.

Books setting forth forms for deeds, mortgages, notes, and contracts, are no doubt valuable.  It should be a part of every young man’s education to know something of these.  We cannot for the small business transactions of life be hunting up the “attorney-at-law” or the village squire.  But economy in the transfer of property or in the making of wills is sometimes a permanent disaster.  There are so many quirks in the law, so many hiding-places for scamps, so many modes of twisting phraseology, so many decisions, precedents and rulings, so many John Does who have brought suits against Richard Roes, that you had better in all important business matters seek out an honest lawyer.

“There are none such!” cries out Quizzle.

Why, where have you lived?  There are as many honest men in the legal profession as in any other, and rogues more than enough in all professions.  Many a farmer, going down to attend court in the county-seat, takes a load of produce to the market, carefully putting the specked apples at the bottom of the barrel, and hiding among the fresh ones the egg which some discouraged hen after five weeks of “setting” had abandoned, and having secured the sale of his produce and lost his suit in the “Court of Common Pleas,” has come home denouncing the scoundrelism of attorneys.

You shall find plenty of honest lawyers if you really need them; and in matters involving large interests you had better employ them.