200 THE HUNTING FIELD 



beats our power of deciphering. Then the impudence 

 of a fellow so replete with ignorance charging as much, 

 nay more, for his medicine than the regularly educated 

 practitioner. Three shillings for two "pirgin bales," 

 meaning, we presume, two physic balls, which we all 

 know can be bought at any chemist's for a shilling 

 a-piece, or for ten shillings a dozen. The veterinary 

 surgeons, we may observe, do themselves no good by 

 exorbitant charges for medicine, it only drives custom 

 away to the chemist that would otherwise come to 

 them. " Live and let live," is a good useful motto, 

 applicable to vets as well as to other trades. There 

 is a story told of a young "sawbones," who, on 

 sending in his bill to his solitary patient, added the 

 following note : — 



"Being a young man anxious to get forward I have charged 

 double," 



and Elijah Bullwaist is in a somewhat similar pre- 

 dicament, only he is an old man whose business has 

 left him. 



Twenty years ago Elijah had the sign of the Rising 

 Sun in the centre of the village of Hatherly, with a well 

 frequented smithey adjoining, but irregular conduct 

 caused him at length to forfeit his license, and he has 

 now a beer-shop and forge at the east end of the 

 town, where he carries on a second-rate business as 

 a blacksmith, and a first-rate one as a blackguard. 

 This beer-shop is the resort of all the vagabonds in 

 the country; poachers, trampers, tinkers, discarded 

 servants, hawkers, pedlars, raffs of all sorts, who find 

 in Bulhvaist and his numerous progeny, congenial 

 spirits and ribald company. 



There, over the lowest, basest, most revolutionary 

 prints, they charge the result of their own misconduct 

 on the laws, and heap abuse on every one whose 

 authority keeps them in control. It is a sad sight to 

 see a hoary old sinner, like Bulhvaist, leading his own 



