1S3S : 39. INTERMEDIATE STATE. 205 



with smoke, that only the sound of merry voices and shouts of 

 laughter showed that it was inhabited. 



" I am now, as you know, in my chrysalis state ; while you 

 were here I was a caterpillar, feeding on the docken leaves and 

 nettle stalks of physic and surgery ; and now I am in the 

 transition state between the obscure worm and the brilliant 

 butterfly. I am, as it were, nobody. I doubt momently of 

 my identity, and hold conversations between myself and my 

 non-self ; my Master-ship and my Doctor-ship. Doctor I am 

 not yet, for the mystic medicating cap has not yet physicianed 

 me. Mr. I am not, for I have paid out the goodly gold, and 

 run the gauntlet of the searching queries demanded at the hands 

 of aspirants by the doctor-makers. I am neither fish nor fowl, 

 but some strange hybrid, a human bat (vampire is no bad name 

 after all for a blood-sucking medico) a two-legged ornithoryn- 

 chus, a terrestrial merman, a griffin, a centaur, a hippogriff, or 

 some other ' half-made-up ' piece of vitality, disclaimed by per- 

 fect creatures of all kinds, and only allowed to hover about the 

 confines, the neutral ground, which belongs to none or to all. 

 I can get on at home tolerably well, for they call me George ; 

 but I fear to answer the calls of Mr. or Dr. Wilson, and those 

 who address me seem equally perplexed, they beckon me with 

 Dr., and when I approach I am saluted as Mr. I am a species 

 of chameleon ; I change visibly before those who gaze on me. 

 It is an awful state to be in. I have been combating my 

 existential non-existence with every weapon in my power. I 

 have had my card engraved Dr. G. Wilson, and I gaze on it 

 betimes, when the ignorance of who I am comes over me ; the 

 servant is instructed to cry Doctor to me, whenever she sees me 

 musing ; and this last recipe I feel the most effectual of the 

 whole. For a few days after I was changed, I thought I was 

 fully fledged, and fluttered away, thinking I was flying ; but I 

 was soon brought to my senses, and crammed into my chrysalis 

 case again. I daily become graver and graver. I see myself 

 equipped in professional black, gliding about on noiseless tip- 

 toe, bland and courteous, smiling and hoping and fearing, like 

 the most ancient doctor of them all. I have got a silver-headed 



