8 DOCTOR AND PREACHER. 



fashion and regularity. Dr. Goodsir would start from 

 Largo on Monday, caparisoned for the week with 

 drugs and surgical appliances, and not return home 

 till Friday — as itinerant with his physic as the ancient 

 Peripatetic with his philosophy. He rode with a pecu- 

 liar swinging motion that brought his spurs too fre- 

 quently in contact with the horse ; and after the spur- 

 points were clandestinely cut off, the doctor still made 

 the rowel play, causing marked solutions of continuity 

 in the nag's sides. In his moods of abstraction, 

 medical and theological, he overlooked the effects of 

 hard steel upon soft textures. To obviate the dangers 

 of travelling by night, he carried a lantern, fastened by 

 a strap above his knee. The bull's-eye of the doctor's 

 lantern was often signalled, in moonless nights, herald- 

 ing the comforting assurance of an obstetric deliverance. 

 His regularity in his rounds vied with the carrier of 

 his Majesty's mails, and the saddle-bags of the one, 

 and surgical accoutrements of the other, were similarly 

 horsed, so that the Laird of Largo, scanning the roads, 

 used to say, — " It's either the doctor or the post that's 

 coming." His piety in time became as noted and 

 demonstrative as his physic ; for, after leaving " the 

 Established Church," and having had experience of the 

 "Independents," he joined the "Baptists" at Largo, 

 and occupied their pulpit for twenty years ! The 

 Christian community looked upon him as " a physician 

 by profession and a pastor by principle." His success 

 in both directions led Fife folk to say that Dr. 

 Goodsir's physic always did good, as it was mixed 



