HE CHOOSES A PROFESSION.
"Here let us breathe, and happily introduce a course of learning, and
ingenious studies."--_Shakspeare._
"The whole world cannot again prick out five such, take each one in his
vein."--_Idem._
Having thus completed his classical studies, and come off, as we have
seen, with the customary academic honors, the next subject of
consideration at the domestic fireside was the choice of a profession.
His parents were not only conscientious people, but sincerely
religious, and really desirous of doing good. They would, therefore,
have preferred making him a clergyman, had he given evidence of piety.
But such was not the fact. He was truly amiable in his disposition, of
grave and quiet manners, and of sound morality. Still, they could not
think of thrusting their son into the sacerdotal office, as is
oftentimes the practice with regard to younger sons in foreign parts,
merely as a trade to get a living by, while the head only is engaged in
the work, and the heart has neither part nor lot in the matter. Some
other profession was therefore necessary; and as his good parents were
religiously opposed to the quarrelsome profession of the law, the
choice was necessarily directed to that of medicine. In the sequel it
will be seen, that, let people be ever so conscientious, they are
obnoxious to great errors in the education of their children, and
equally liable with others to err in the selection of that walk of
life, or profession, for which they are least adapted by character or
capacity.
But to proceed. Law and divinity being out of the question, it was
resolved, in family council, that Daniel should become a disciple of
Galen, and acquire the art of compounding simples, and healing the
various diseases which flesh is heir to. He was accordingly entered in
the office of an eminent medical gentleman, in one of the most
beautiful cities which adorn the banks of the majestic Hudson. I will
not be so particular as to name the place, lest other towns should be
moved to jealousy. Each of the seven cities that contended for the
honor of giving birth to Homer, was as well off as though each was
actually entitled to it--whereas, had the point been settled, six of
them would not have been worth living in; rent-free. There is another
reason for not being too particular. Although, unlike Byron, I have no
fear of being taken for the hero of my own tale, yet were I to bring
matters too near their homes, but too many of the real characters of my
narrative might be identified. Suffice it, then, to say of the
location--_Ilium fuit_!
Immediately after his induction into the office of his Æsculapian
Mentor, Daniel became DOCTOR WHEELWRIGHT--and through all the subsequent
vicissitudes of his life, and all the changes of his pursuits, and
they have neither been few nor unimportant, the title has adhered to
him until this day.
I have already said that his personal appearance was good, a
circumstance which of course was not at all to his disadvantage. His
first business in his new station, was the selection of a genteel
boarding-house, the purchase of a new and fashionable suit of clothes,
and a snuff-box. Ever partial to the society of ladies, he was
assiduous in his efforts to cultivate their acquaintance, especially of
those among them who were of a literary turn. Chief of the female
literati of the town, was a lady of no certain age, but of great
pretensions, whose hose were deeply _azure_. With her he became quite
intimate, and she found his services particularly convenient, in
sending to the circulating library for books, and in other respects in
which it was found he could render himself useful; and he in turn was
never more truly happy than when obeying the behests of a blue of such
celebrity. These preliminary arrangements occupied about three or four
months of the first year, during which he could of course have but
little time to attend to his books. He did, however, make a beginning;
but mental application was no easier now, than when in college, and he
had moreover succeeded in forming acquaintances in a larger and more
attractive circle than was to be found within and about the college
walls. It required the greater portions of his mornings to keep alive
these acquaintances; and every body knows it is no time for hard study
after a hearty dinner--of which, particularly if it were good, few were
more fond than "Doctor Wheelwright." Thus the first year found him
scarcely at the close of the first chapter of Cheselden's Anatomy.
An attendance upon the lectures of some regular medical college was of
course essential to a thorough professional education, and his father
had now become ambitious of doing the best for a son upon whom he began
to look as a young man of high promise. Every where he was now spoken
of as "young Doctor Wheelwright;" and there was something gratifying to
a parent's ear in that. He was therefore sent to New-York to hear the
instructive eloquence of Hosack; the wise and prudent counsels of Post;
to press into his goblet the grapes of wisdom clustering around the
tongue of Mitchill; and to acquire the principles of surgery from the
lips, and the skilful use of the knife from the untrembling hand, of
Mott. Tickets were procured for all the regular courses of the college
lectures, all of which were attended without intermission, and most of
them slept over without compunction. The truth is, that neither medical
authors, nor medical orations had any congeniality with his feelings.
His love for science could not conquer his aversion to the
dissecting-room, and he greatly preferred taking care of the body as he
found it, to the labor of ascertaining how it was made;--he liked well
to have the springs and wheels of his own frame in easy and accurate
motion, but cared not to examine the delicate structure of the
complicated machinery. The consequence was, that when not in the
lecture-room his time was occupied--not with his books, but in
lion-hunting. He visited the theatre when Cooper, and Pritchard, and
Mrs. Darley, were in their glory; lounged frequent hours in the
museums; and was the first to run after every new attraction placarded
at the corners. He was greatly taken with the agility of an Armenian
girl, upon the wire and slack-rope, who was in truth a second Fenella
in the sprightliness of her nimble exhibitions. Day Francis, the
conjuror, was his admiration. He was delighted with Rannie, the old
ventriloquist, and the first in America; and Potter, the late sable and
celebrated professor of legerdemain, in slight-of-hand, he thought
actually excelled Doctor Mott himself.
At the close of the term he returned to the country, and resumed
Cheselden. But he yet preferred the society of the ladies--accompanying
them in their morning walks, and at their evening parties. And with
them all he was a favorite--of a particular description. Full of good
nature--easy and accommodating in his disposition, ever ready to
oblige, when any of the fair were in distress for a beau, he could
always be had, and even felt honored to be called upon such service,
when it was not desirable to take such a liberty with gallants of a
different cast and temperament. Especially were his services of value
at parties, where exigencies of a particular description were likely to
occur--as, when some not very popular damsel lived at the farthermost
end of the town; or in such other undefinable cases as might result in
the danger of some forlorn maidens being left, after the whips and
blanc-manges were disposed of, to perform the homeward pilgrimage on
foot and alone--as the girl went to get married.
But the beau and the student are different animals; and at the close of
the second year, the young doctor had only half completed Cheselden's
article on Osteology. It began now to be evident that at this rate he
would never become an M.D., easily as this honor is obtained; and it
was equally doubtful whether the most complaisant censors of a medical
society, would, at the end of three years, admit him to practice. The
distinguished medical gentleman with whom he was attempting to play the
student, saw that if Harvey had not discovered the theory of the
circulation of the blood, Doctor Wheelwright certainly would never have
made it, and he hinted to his pupil in as delicate a manner as
possible, that even if he had been cut out by nature for a physician,
he had been spoiled in the making up. My friend was by this time quite
of the same opinion himself; and he thereupon quitted the profession,
with no more medical knowledge than the art of mixing suitable portions
of salts and senna for children, and the preparation of cough-drops, by
compounding the syrup of squills with paregoric and balsam of honey in
equal proportions--which mixture, by the way, is the best prescription
to be found in the Vade Mecum of any physician in Christendom--from Sir
Astley Cooper down to Hahnnemann, of all medical humbugs the chief.
Would that Daniel Wheelwright were the only person who has trifled away
the misapplied money of industrious and misjudging parents!