of the junior partner, I may add briefly that he was just nineteen, that
he had early joined the emigration to California, and after one or two
previous light-hearted essays at other occupations, for which he was
singularly unfitted, he had saved enough to embark on his present
venture, still less suited to his temperament. In those adventurous days
trades and vocations were not always filled by trained workmen; it was
extremely probable that the experienced chemist was already making his
success as a gold-miner, with a lawyer and a physician for his partners,
and Mr. Kane's inexperienced position was by no means a novel one. A
slight knowledge of Latin as a written language, an American schoolboy's
acquaintance with chemistry and natural philosophy, were deemed
sufficient by his partner, a regular physician, for practical
cooperation in the vending of drugs and putting up of prescriptions. He
knew the difference between acids and alkalies and the peculiar results
which attended their incautious combination. But he was excessively
deliberate, painstaking, and cautious. The legend which adorned the desk
at the counter, "Physicians' prescriptions carefully prepared," was more
than usually true as regarded the adverb. There was no danger of his
poisoning anybody through haste or carelessness, but it was possible
that an urgent "case" might have succumbed to the disease while he was
putting up the remedy. Nor was his caution entirely passive. In those
days the "heroic" practice of medicine was in keeping with the abnormal
development of the country; there were "record" doses of calomel
and quinine, and he had once or twice incurred the fury of local
practitioners by sending back their prescriptions with a modest query.
The far-off clatter of carriage wheels presently arrested his attention;
looking down the street, he could see the lights of a hackney carriage
advancing towards him. They had already flashed upon the open crossing
a block beyond before his vague curiosity changed into an active
instinctive presentiment that they were coming to the shop. He withdrew
|