Japhet, in Search of a Father | Page 9

tenor of my life, have forgotten. When I retired to my bed I would revolve in my mind all that I had gained from the governors of the hospital relative to myself.--The paper found in the basket had been given to me. I was born in wedlock--at least, so said that paper. The sum left with me also proved that my parents could not, at my birth, have been paupers. The very peculiar circumstances attending my case, only made me more anxious to know my parentage. I was now old enough to be aware of the value of birth, and I was also just entering the age of romance, and many were the strange and absurd reveries in which I indulged. At one time I would cherish the idea that I was of a noble, if not princely birth, and frame reasons for concealment. At others--but it is useless to repeat the absurdities and castle buildings which were generated in my brain from mystery. My airy fabrics would at last disappear, and leave me in all the misery of doubt and abandoned hope. Mr Cophagus, when the question was sometimes put to him, would say, "Good boy--very good boy--don't want a father." But he was wrong, I did want a father; and every day the want became more pressing, and I found myself continually repeating the question, "_Who is my father?_"

Chapter IV
Very much puzzled with a new Patient, nevertheless take my degree at fifteen as an M.D.; and what is still more acceptable, I pocket the fees.
The departure of Mr Brookes, of course, rendered me more able to follow up with Timothy my little professional attempts to procure pocket-money; but independent of these pillages by the aid of pills, and making drafts upon our master's legitimate profits, by the assistance of draughts from his shop, accident shortly enabled me to raise the ways and means in a more rapid manner. But of this directly.
In the meantime I was fast gaining knowledge; every evening I read surgical and medical books, put into my hands by Mr Cophagus, who explained whenever I applied to him, and I soon obtained a very fair smattering of my profession. He also taught me how to bleed, by making me, in the first instance, puncture very scientifically, all the larger veins of a cabbage-leaf, until well satisfied with the delicacy of my hand, and the precision of my eye, he wound up his instructions by permitting me to breathe a vein in his own arm.
"Well," said Timothy, when he first saw me practising, "I have often heard it said, there's no getting blood out of a turnip; but it seems there is more chance with a cabbage. I tell you what, Japhet, you may try your hand upon me as much as you please, for two-pence a go."
I consented to this arrangement, and by dint of practising on Timothy over and over again, I became quite perfect. I should here observe, that my anxiety relative to my birth increased every day, and that in one of the books lent me by Mr Cophagus, there was a dissertation upon the human frame, sympathies, antipathies, and also on those features and peculiarities most likely to descend from one generation to another. It was there asserted, that the nose was the facial feature most likely to be transmitted from father to son. As I before have mentioned, my nose was rather aquiline; and after I had read this book, it was surprising with what eagerness I examined the faces of those whom I met; and if I saw a nose upon any man's face, at all resembling my own, I immediately would wonder and surmise whether that person could be my father. The constant dwelling upon the subject at last created a species of monomania, and a hundred times a day I would mutter to myself, _"Who is my father?"_ indeed, the very bells, when they rung a peal, seemed, as in the case of Whittington, to chime the question, and at last I talked so much on the subject to Timothy, who was my _Fidus Achates,_ and bosom friend, that I really believe, partial as he was to me, he wished my father at the devil.
Our shop was well appointed with all that glare and glitter with which we decorate the "_house of call_" of disease and death. Being situated in such a thoroughfare, passengers would stop to look in, and ragged-vested, and in other garments still more ragged, little boys would stand to stare at the variety of colours, and the 'pottecary gentleman, your humble servant, who presided over so many labelled-in-gold phalanxes which decorated the sides of the shop.
Among those who always stopped and gazed as she passed by, which was generally three or four times