“Eating and drinking.”
“Eating and drinking! What else?” asked his lordship.
“O, my lord, we never talk about anything but eating and drinking,—except—”
“Except drinking and eating, my lord.”
The council retired, greatly disappointed, for they had expected to worm some important secret from the doctor.
At Finch Lane Tavern, where Dr. Beauford used to receive the apothecaries at half fee, he was represented as sitting over his bottles and glasses, from which he drank deeply, never offering one of his clients a drop, though they often sat opposite, at the same table, looking with anxious countenances and watering mouths upon the tempting cordials, as the doctor tossed them off.
“Doorn’t go to ’im,” etc.
“Not many years since, in a fishing village on the eastern coast, there flourished a doctor in great repute amongst the poor, and his influence over the humble patients literally depended on the fact that he was sure, once in the twenty-four hours, to be handsomely intoxicated.
“Dickens has told us how, when he bought the raven immortalized in ‘Barnaby Rudge,’ the vender of that sagacious bird, after enumerating his various accomplishments, said, in conclusion,—