“Here was nothing to stop you, man; I could leap a platoon through, boot and thigh, without pricking with a single spur. Pshaw! I have often charged upon the bayonets of infantry, over greater difficulties than this.”
“You will please to remember, Captain John Lawton, that I am not the riding master of the regiment—nor a drill sergeant—nor a crazy cornet; no, sir—and I speak it with a due respect for the commission of the Continental Congress—nor an inconsiderate captain, who regards his own life as little as that of his enemies. I am only, sir, a poor humble man of letters, a mere doctor of medicine, an unworthy graduate of Edinburgh, and a surgeon of dragoons; nothing more, I do assure you, Captain John Lawton.” So saying, he turned his horse’s head towards the cottage, and recommenced his ride.
“Aye, you speak the truth,” muttered the dragoon. “Had I but the meanest rider of my troop with me, I should have taken the scoundrel, and given at least one victim to the laws. But, Archibald, no man can ride well who straddles in this manner like the Colossus of Rhodes. You should depend less on your stirrup, and keep your seat by the power of the knee.”
“With proper deference to your experience, Captain Lawton,” returned the surgeon, “I conceive myself to be no incompetent judge of muscular action, whether in the knee, or in any other part of the human frame. And although but humbly educated, I am not now to learn that the wider the base, the more firm is the superstructure.”
“Would you fill a highway, in this manner, with one pair of legs, when half a dozen might pass together in comfort, stretching them abroad like the scythes of the ancient chariot wheels?”
The allusion to the practice of the ancients somewhat softened the indignation of the surgeon, and he replied, with rather less hauteur,—
“You should speak with reverence of the usages of those who have gone before us, and who, however ignorant they were in matters of science, and particularly that of surgery, yet furnished many brilliant hints to our own improvements. Now, sir, I have no doubt that Galen has operated on wounds occasioned by these very scythes that you mention, although we can find no evidence of the fact in contemporary writers. Ah! they must have given dreadful injuries, and, I doubt not, caused great uneasiness to the medical gentlemen of that day.”
“Occasionally a body must have been left in two pieces, to puzzle the ingenuity of those gentry to unite. Yet, venerable and learned as they were, I doubt not they did it.”
“What! unite two parts of the human body, that have been severed by an edged instrument, to any of the purposes of animal life?”
“That have been rent asunder by a scythe, and are united to do military duty,” said Lawton.