Query, a bump? Cannot remember any. Might have got it against
bedpost or something while asleep. Very unpleasant to look so. I wonder
how my portrait would look, if anybody should take it now! I hope not
quite so badly as one I saw the other day, which I took for the end man
of the Ethiopian Serenaders, or some traveller who had been exploring the
sources of the Niger, until I read the name at the bottom and found it
was a face I knew as well as my own.
I must consult somebody, and it is nothing more than fair to give our
young Doctor a chance. Here goes for Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
The young Doctor has a very small office and a very large sign, with a
transparency at night big enough for an oyster-shop. These young doctors
are particularly strong, as I understand, on what they call
diagnosis,--an excellent branch of the healing art, full of satisfaction
to the curious practitioner, who likes to give the right Latin name to
one's complaint; not quite so satisfactory to the patient, as it is not
so very much pleasanter to be bitten by a dog with a collar round his
neck telling you that he is called Snap or Teaser, than by a dog without
a collar. Sometimes, in fact, one would a little rather not know the
exact name of his complaint, as if he does he is pretty sure to look it
out in a medical dictionary, and then if he reads, This terrible disease
is attended with vast suffering and is inevitably mortal, or any such
statement, it is apt to affect him unpleasantly.
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