On all those points, however, where a plain question appeared to him to be
permissible, the Doctor was unsparing in his endeavours to cultivate the
wilderness of his ignorance and uncertainty and so to complete his
education.
So it was that, following the advice given him by a wise mother on his
first coming up to the capital from his provincial home, he would never
let pass either a figure of speech or a proper name that was new to him
without an effort to secure the fullest information upon it.
As regards figures of speech, he was insatiable in his thirst for
knowledge, for often imagining them to have a more definite meaning than
was actually the case, he would want to know what, exactly, was intended
by those which he most frequently heard used: 'devilish pretty,' 'blue
blood,' 'a cat and dog life,' 'a day of reckoning,' 'a queen of
fashion, 'to give a free hand,' 'to be at a deadlock,' and so forth; and
in what particular circumstances he himself might make use of them in
conversation. Failing these, he would adorn it with puns and other 'plays
upon words' which he had learned by rote. As for the names of strangers
which were uttered in his hearing, he used merely to repeat them to
himself in a questioning tone, which, he thought, would suffice to furnish
him with explanations for which he would not ostensibly seek.
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