I have known what it is to be without a friend when one is very inexperienced, reckless, and young.
Evening.
“To what base uses may we come at last.”
It seems perfectly ridiculous to see the use this memorandum-book has come to. Cases forsooth! The few pages of them may as well be torn out, in favour of the new specimens of moral disease which I am driven to study. For instance:—
No. 1—Better omit that.
No. 2—Augustus Treherne, æt. 22, intermittent fever, verging upon yellow fever occasionally, as to-day. Pulse, very high, tongue, rather foul, especially in speaking of Mr. Colin Granton. Countenance, pale, inclining to livid. A very bad case altogether.
Patient enters, whistling like a steam-engine, as furious and as shrill, with a corresponding puff of smoke. I point to the obnoxious vapour.
“Beg pardon, Doctor, I always forget. What a tyrant you are!”
“Very likely; but there is one thing I never will allow; smoking in my hut. I did not, you know, even in the Crimea.”
The lad sat down, sighing like a furnace.