He paused. Neither Bainbridge nor I spoke. In fact, an expression of our thoughts would have been wholly unnecessary, as Castleton appeared to comprehend what was in our minds, as shown by his continued remarks.
"'Liberality,'" you may say: "True, there should be liberality in this eternal world. Individually we are liberal—we are gentlemen; but it is different with us when you take us as a body. I am for harmony. I admit that at our meetings we do sometimes fight like very devils—life is a conflict, anyway. Sir, the country is full of cursed heresies and growing schisms.—But let me ask—not the doctor here, whom I respect for his immense learning and Cyclopsian (I mean large—not single-eyed) wisdom—what his remedy would be? I ask you, sir, not him."
Here Doctor Castleton stepped close to my side, and speaking into my ear in a ghastly whisper, said, "The ass isn't Regular!" He then drew back, and looked at me as if expecting astonishment on my part.
I then exchanged a few words with Bainbridge, and informed Castleton of the result. "Ah, ha—ah, ha—indeed," he said, with as near an approach to sarcasm as was possible with him. "So my learned young friend thinks that an organ—the liver—weighing nearly four pounds is to be moved with a hundredth of a drop of—of—anything! Damn it, sir, am I awake?"
"Ask Doctor Castleton, sir, what portion of a grain of small-pox virus it would require to disseminate over a whole county, if not checked, a dread disease? Ask him from what an oak-tree grows?"
"Ask him," said Castleton, "how long it takes an acorn to act. In this case we require celerity of action—force and penetration."
"Ask him," said Bainbridge, "if the solar rays have celerity, and force, and penetration; and how much they weigh. It requires fine shot to bring down the essence of a disease——"
"Tell him," shouted Castleton, "that the liver is a mammoth that requires a twenty-four-pounder to penetrate its hide. We don't hunt the rhinoceros with bird-shot."
"Say to the gentleman," said Bainbridge, slightly flushed, but still with dignity, "that in this case the animal is not to be slaughtered, but to be cured."
"Damme," said Castleton, "who says slaughtered?—Have I, a surgeon of renown, a gentleman and a scholar, a member of the County Society, sunk so low that I can be called a murderer? Stop—stop where you are—stop in time. Say to the Gentleman that he has gone too far—say that an apology is in order—say that he treads the edge of a living crater. I am dangerous—so my friends say—devilish dangerous"—a smile crossed the face of Bainbridge; and even so slight and transient an appearance as a passing smile was not lost on Castleton, though he seemed to be looking another way—"I mean dangerous on the field of honor. Quackery, sir, is my abhorrence——"