'Behold! my friends, this box which I hold between my finger and thumb. Within the small circumference be the mystical elements of life. A million of money for a moment of time, but I offer you, dying friends, free-gracious for nothing - except a paltry sixpence, warranted to add not moments only but years to your precious lives. I open the box which I hold between my fingers and there lying upon this bed of soft pink wool 50 globules in miniature, or speaking more plainly, 50 efficacious death defiers.'

The village doctor's predecessor had relied on cupping and salivating as his orthodox prescription for most diseases. He had glorified in a patient with a tongue twice the size of his mouth.

His greatest aversion was 'nerves'. Believing them a creation of fancy, he treated them as such, ordering a plentiful supply of hard work as cure.
A resident Elms doctor's habits of study and powers of learning was without peer. He knew the Latin names of the simplest herbs that grew. Camomile was reputed to have entered largely into his dispensatory with tansy, senna, liquorice,marjoram and the much vaunted borage.

The doctor had special formulas for their application which restored to each herb its virtue, often destroyed in unscientific usage.
Rueben, holding forth to his audience in the King's Head, gave evidence of the doctor's knowledge.

'Doctor once showed me a little dried plant that grew soommwheear a despert lang waay off. An' he telt me name an' all, bud Ah's forgetten it, thoff it was a strange lang name, and ther was neeaboddy in this coonthry knawed it bud him.'

Rueben went on. 'He give me a reead mixter iv a langish bottle wi teeaspoons notched up side on her, and said Ah'd ti tak tweea wen Ah went ti bed ov a neet, and yan wen Ah gat up in a mornin'.'
'Give me mah cooat Gooarge, for meean's on her back an' ther'll either be rain or snow afooare mornin'. It's nigh ten o'clock. Ah's off.'
Through the gateposts at the Elms passed the coughs, colds, the limps and halts, the aches and pains and swollen faces and constricted breathing, and the infantile convulsions, the cream of the village's suffering.
The surgery on the shaded west side of the house stretched with its single window along the drive, having a separate entrance round the kitchen court for humble sufferers.

The doctor's front room contained his secretaire, full of wisdom and deep knowledge. A brass fender guarded the fire place and the polished coal scuttle was kept replenished by his housekeeper.

The chairs and sofas were dispersed about the room, items of necessity, upholstered in horse hair, having been in possession of his own parents.
The doctor's brown hair showed here and there the grey scribblings of trouble. It was a joy to witness now and again the boy in him when engaged in some prank or other at the village fete.

Day and night he never questioned the summons that drew him forth, whether presented in childhood's squeaking treble for some errand of necessity, or heralded by a fusillade of pebbles against his bedroom window. Stackgarth and foldyard, harvest field and railway station, as well as humble cottage, demanded his presence.

'Come into the dairy doctor if you will for I don't want to leave the cheese.' Mrs Lovel at the Grange reached a small white basin that stood on the shelf, and dipped it into the whey tub. She was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a compliment from the doctor, but a quiet complacency overspread her face as she looked at the doctor drinking the whey with relish.

'A farmhouse is a fine thing for them as look on, an' don't know the liftin' an' stannin' an' worritin' on the inside as them as them that belongs to it', she uttered, as she busied herself with the cheeses.
Rueben wandered into the dairy for his morning drinkins. 'Wolld's tonned upside doon sen we come here. Ther isn't a theeaked hoose left in village an' ther was a lot wen we coomm tiv it.'

'Ah nivver went ti skeeal, doctor. Nivver had a daay skeealin' in mah life. Ah wor a weeaver fosst at carpet factory. Six o'clock we had to be there. One shilling an' sixpence a week. We went doon ti see fosst train coomm thruff village. Ther was sike a lot on us an' wen it coomed we all lifted up oor airms and sceeamed.'

The doctor's favourite time of year in the village was midsummer when the setting sun baptised his brass name plate and in its red beam a column of nats rose and fell. The doctor then was seen out and about by cockleet and was returning home in his dog cart at sundown.