In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the… — Anthony Trollope

Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor followed his profession.

One of her instructors in fashion had given her to understand that curls were not the thing. "They'll always pass muster," Miss Dunstable had replied, "when they are done up with bank notes."

There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.