In passing, the editor remarks that the physician here named was one of the most eminent who had ever practised in England.
I did, having had letters to him, and had experienced from him great courtesy and considerable assistance during my visit to England.
“I think that man one of the very greatest fools I ever met in my life,” said Mr. Jennings.
This was the first time I had ever heard him say a sharp thing of anybody, and such a term applied to so high a name a little startled me.
“Really! and in what way?” I asked.
“In his profession,” he answered.
I smiled.
“I mean this,” he said: “he seems to me, one half, blind—I mean one half of all he looks at is dark—preternaturally bright and vivid all the rest; and the worst of it is, it seems wilful. I can’t get him—I mean he won’t—I’ve had some experience of him as a physician, but I look on him as, in that sense, no better than a paralytic mind, an intellect half dead, I’ll tell you—I know I shall some time—all about it,” he said, with a little agitation. “You stay some months longer in England. If I should be out of town during your stay for a little time, would you allow me to trouble you with a letter?”
“I should be only too happy,” I assured him.
“Very good of you. I am so utterly dissatisfied with Harley.”