fireplace without any stove, full of wood ashes; a chair, and a
very small table; and on the last-named piece of furniture was
displayed, in grand array, the doctor’s library, consisting of some
half-dozen greasy old books.
Now, it certainly looked about the last apartment on the whole
earth out of which any man would be likely to get anything to do
him good. But the door, as I have said, stood coaxingly open, and
plainly said in conjunction with the chair, the portrait, the
table, and the books, ‘Walk in, gentlemen, walk in! Don’t be ill,
gentlemen, when you may be well in no time. Doctor Crocus is here,
gentlemen, the celebrated Dr. Crocus! Dr. Crocus has come all this
way to cure you, gentlemen. If you haven’t heard of Dr. Crocus,
it’s your fault, gentlemen, who live a little way out of the world
here: not Dr. Crocus’s. Walk in, gentlemen, walk in!’
In the passage below, when I went down-stairs again, was Dr. Crocus
himself. A crowd had flocked in from the Court House, and a voice
from among them called out to the landlord, ‘Colonel! introduce
Doctor Crocus.’
‘Mr. Dickens,’ says the colonel, ‘Doctor Crocus.’
Upon which Doctor Crocus, who is a tall, fine-looking Scotchman,
but rather fierce and warlike in appearance for a professor of the
peaceful art of healing, bursts out of the concourse with his right
arm extended, and his chest thrown out as far as it will possibly
come, and says:
‘Your countryman, sir!’
Whereupon Doctor Crocus and I shake hands; and Doctor Crocus looks
as if I didn’t by any means realise his expectations, which, in a
linen blouse, and a great straw hat, with a green ribbon, and no
gloves, and my face and nose profusely ornamented with the stings
of mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, it is very likely I did not.
‘Long in these parts, sir?’ says I.
‘Three or four months, sir,’ says the Doctor.
‘Do you think of soon returning to the old country?’ says I.
Doctor Crocus makes no verbal answer, but gives me an imploring
look, which says so plainly ‘Will you ask me that again, a little
louder, if you please?’ that I repeat the question.
‘Think of soon returning to the old country, sir!’ repeats the
Doctor.
‘To the old country, sir,’ I rejoin.
Doctor Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe the effect he
produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a very loud voice:
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‘Not yet awhile, sir, not yet. You won’t catch me at that just
yet, sir. I am a little too fond of freedom for THAT, sir. Ha,
ha! It’s not so easy for a man to tear himself from a free country
such as this is, sir. Ha, ha! No, no! Ha, ha! None of that till
one’s obliged to do it, sir. No, no!’
As Doctor Crocus says these latter words, he shakes his head,
knowingly, and laughs again. Many of the bystanders shake their
heads in concert with the doctor, and laugh too, and look at each
other as much as to say, ‘A pretty bright and first-rate sort of
chap is Crocus!’ and unless I am very much mistaken, a good many
people went to the lecture that night, who never thought about
phrenology, or about Doctor Crocus either, in all their lives
before.
From Belleville, we went on, through the same desolate kind of
waste, and constantly attended, without the interval of a moment,
by the same music; until, at three o’clock in the afternoon, we
halted once more at a village called Lebanon to inflate the horses
again, and give them some corn besides: of which they stood much
in need. Pending this ceremony, I walked into the village, where I
met a full-sized dwelling-house coming down-hill at a round trot,
drawn by a score or more of oxen.
The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that the
managers of the jaunt resolved to return to it and put up there for
the night, if possible. This course decided on, and the horses
being well refreshed, we again pushed forward, and came upon the