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Here is a picture of thrifty life in a country village estate in old New England days.

He preached at first, then became a judge, and he “doctored.”

They were queer people who doctored then, with wig and gig. Brother Jonathan doctored the poor. He doctored out of his goodly instincts more than from a medical code, though he could administer prescriptions from Latin that it was deemed presumptuous for the patient to inquire about. Now people know what medicine they take, but it was deemed audacious then to ask any questions about Latin prescriptions, or to seek to penetrate such an awful mystery as was contained in the “Ferrocesquicianurit of the Cynide of Potassium,” or to find out that a ranunculus bulbosus was only a buttercup.

Among the good old tavern tales of such old-time doctors was one of a notional old woman, who used to send for the doctor as often as she saw any one passing who was going the doctor’s way. Once when there was coming on one of these awful March snow-storms that buried up houses, she saw a teamster hurrying against the pitiless snow toward the town where the doctor’s office was.