The people down here are a queer lot; but I have hunted up two or three jolly cocks, and we contrive to keep the place alive between us.  Of course, all the knockers came off the first night I arrived, and to-morrow we are going to climb out upon the roof of my abode, and make a tour along the tops of the neighbouring houses, putting turfs on the tops of all the practicable chimneys.  Jack Randall—­such a jolly chick! you must be introduced to him—­has promised to tie a cord across the pavement at the corner, from the lamp-post to a door-scraper; and we have made a careful estimate that, out of every half-dozen people who pass, six will fall down, four cut their faces more or less arterially, and two contuse their foreheads.  I, you may imagine, shall wait at home all the evening for the crippled ones, and Jack is to go halves in what I get for plastering them up.  We may be so lucky as to procure a case of concussion—­who knows?  Jack is a real friend:  he cannot be of much use to me in the way of recommendation, because the people here think he is a little wild; but as far as seriously injuring the parishioners goes, he declares he will lose no chance.  He says he knows some gipsies on the common who have got scarlet-fever in their tent; and he is going to give them half-a-crown if they can bring it into the village, to be paid upon the breaking out of the first undoubted case.  This will fag the Union doctor to death, who is my chief opponent, and I shall come in for some of the private patients.

My surgery is not very well stocked at present, but I shall write to Ansell and Hawke after Christmas.  I have got a pickle-bottle full of liquorice-powder, which has brought me in a good deal already, and assisted to perform several wonderful cures.  I administer it in powders, two drachms in six, to be taken morning, noon, and night; and it appears to be a valuable medicine for young practitioners, as you may give a large dose, without producing any very serious effects.  Somebody was insane enough to send to me the other night for a pill and draught; and if Jack Randall had not been there, I should have been regularly stumped, having nothing but Epsom salts.  He cut a glorious calomel pill out of pipeclay, and then we concocted a black-draught of salts and bottled stout, with a little patent boot-polish.  Next day, the patient finding himself worse, sent for me, and I am trying the exhibition of linseed-meal and rose-pink in small doses, under which treatment he is gradually recovering.  It has since struck me that a minute portion of sulphuric acid enters into the composition of the polish, possibly causing the indisposition which he describes “as if he was tied all up in a double-knot, and pulled tight.”