Laddie, and Miss Toosey's Mission

In a quiet old-fashioned street near Portman Square there is a door with a brass plate upon it, bearing the name "Dr. Carter. " The door is not singular in possessing a brass plate, for almost every house in the street displays one, being inhabited nearly entirely by doctors and musical professors. I do not attempt to explain why it is so, -- whether that part of London is especially unhealthy, and so requires constant and varied medical advice, or whether there is something in the air conducive to harmony; or whether the musical professors attract the doctors, or the doctors the professors, I leave to more learned heads to discover, only hazarding the suggestion that perhaps the highly strung musical nerves may be an interesting study to the faculty, or that music may have charms to soothe the savage medical breast or drive away the evil spirits of the dissecting-room. Anyhow, the fact remains that North Crediton Street is the resort of doctors and musical men, and that on one of the doors stands the plate of Dr. Carter.

It was an old-fashioned, substantially built house, built about the beginning of the last century, when people knew how to build solidly, if not beautifully. It had good thick walls, to which you might whisper a secret without confiding it to your next-door neighbor, and firm, well-laid floors, on which you might dance, if you had a mind to, without fear of descending suddenly into the basement. There were heavy frames to the windows, and small squares of glass, and wooden staircases with thick, twisted banisters, -- a house altogether, at which housemaids looked with contempt, as something infinitely less "genteel" than the "splendid mansions" of lath and plaster, paint and gilding, which are run up with such magic speed nowadays. We have no need to ring the bell and disturb the soft-voiced, deferential man-servant, out of livery, from the enjoyment of his evening paper in the pantry, for we can pass uninvited and unannounced into Dr. Carter's consulting-room, and take a look at it and him. There is nothing remarkable about the room; a book-case full of medical and scientific books; a large writing-table with pigeon holes for papers and a stethoscope on the top; a reading-lamp with a green shade, and an india-rubber tube to supply it with gas from the burner above; a side-table with more books and papers and a small galvanic battery; a large india-rubber plant in the window; framed photographs of eminent physicians and surgeons over the mantelpiece; a fire burning low in the grate; a thick turkey carpet and heavy leather chairs; and there you have an inventory of the furniture, to arrange before your mind's eye if you think it worth while.