stumped in, filthy, red-eyed, bearded with icicles, strangely invested in a chafed leathern reefer and a bell-crowned silk hat, like some Ancient Mariner of low farce.
"Hallelujah!" he croaked inconsequently, shifting a feeble glare about the room. "Rejoice, bretherin!"
"Mornin', doctor," they replied. "How the patients this cold spell?"
"Healt the sick and cast out divils," recited the old man, as if struggling hoarsely against a storm that defeated his shouts. "Causin' the blind to walk and the lame to clap their hands. No credit to me, bretherin. Providence done it. Praise the Lord! Who's got a fig o' tabacca?"
To become a doctor was the fisherman's mode of hibernating. A fat book—"Cost me five dollar!" he roared—which contained as frontispiece an M.D.'s diploma perforated at the edge, to be torn out and framed; a black oilcloth bag, holding bottles and boxes, "Opydeldock, hartshorn, medder-sage, black cohosh, tinction o' nitre, arnicky;" and a tall, rusty silk hat which called forth reminiscences
