He desired experience, and in the course of twenty years
he got a great deal. It must be added that it came to him in some
forms which, whatever might have been their intrinsic value, made it
the reverse of welcome. His first child, a little boy of
extraordinary promise, as the Doctor, who was not addicted to easy
enthusiasms, firmly believed, died at three years of age, in spite of
everything that the mother's tenderness and the father's science
could invent to save him. Two years later Mrs. Sloper gave birth to
a second infant--an infant of a sex which rendered the poor child, to
the Doctor's sense, an inadequate substitute for his lamented first-
born, of whom he had promised himself to make an admirable man. The
little girl was a disappointment; but this was not the worst. A week
after her birth the young mother, who, as the phrase is, had been
doing well, suddenly betrayed alarming symptoms, and before another
week had elapsed Austin Sloper was a widower.
For a man whose trade was to keep people alive, he had certainly done
poorly in his own family; and a bright doctor who within three years
loses his wife and his little boy should perhaps be prepared to see
either his skill or his affection impugned. Our friend, however,
escaped criticism: that is, he escaped all criticism but his own,
which was much the most competent and most formidable. He walked
under the weight of this very private censure for the rest of his
days, and bore for ever the scars of a castigation to which the
strongest hand he knew had treated him on the night that followed his
wife's death.
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