"At first sight we were in doubt whether to set him down as a
doctor or a pedagogue, for his dress presented one very
characteristic appendage of the latter, namely a square cut black
coat, which never was, never would be, and probably never had been,
in fashion. A profusion of cambric frills, huge silver
shoe-buckles, a snuff-box of the same metal, and a gold-headed cane
belonging rather to the costume of the physician of the period. He
wore a very precise wig of a very decided brown, regularly crisped
at the top like a bunch of endive, and in front, following the
exact curves of the arches of two bushy eyebrows. He had dark eyes,
a prominent nose, and a wide mouth--the corners of which in smiling
were drawn towards his double chin. A florid colour on his face
hinted a plethoric habit, while a portly body and a very short
thick neck bespoke an apoplectic tendency. Warned by these
indications, prudence had made him a strict water-drinker, and
abstemious in his diet--a mode of treatment which he applied to all
his patients short or tall, stout or thin, with whom whatever their
disease, he invariably began by reducing them, as an arithmetician
would say, to their lowest terms. This mode of treatment raised him
much in the estimation of the parish authorities.
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