CHAP. rv.J PEEPAKJNa FOE A MEDICAL DEG-REE.
require other than a very cursory mention here. On the day
of Ms arrival he is reported to have set forth for a ramble
round the streets, after leaving his luggage at hired lodgings
where he had forgotten to inquire the name either of the
street or the landlady, and to which he only found his way
back by the accident of meeting the porter who had carried
his trunk from the coach.* He is also said to have obtained,
in this temporary abode, a knowledge of the wondrous
culinary expedients with which three medical students might
be supported for a whole week on a single loin of mutton, by
a brandered chop served up one day, a fried steak another,
chops with onion sauce a third, and so on till the fleshy
parts should be quite consumed, when finally, on the seventh
day, a dish of broth manufactured from the bones would appear,
and the ingenious landlady rested from her labours.t It is
moreover recorded, in proof of Ms careless habits in respect
to money, that being in company with several fellow-students
on the first night of a new play, he suddenly proposed to
draw lots with any one present which of the two should
treat the whole party to the theatre; when the real fact was,
as he afterwards confessed in speaking of the secret joy with
which he heard them all decline the challenge, that had, it
been accepted* and had he proved the loser, he must have
pledged a part of his wardrobe in order to raise the money.I
This last anecdote, if true, reveals to us at any rate that he
had a wardrobe to pledge. Such resource in the matter of
dress is one of Ms peculiarities found generally peeping out
in some form or other: and, unable to confirm any other
fact in these recollections, I can at least establish that,
* Percy M&moir, 19,
•f Ibid. Ami see preface to the Glasgow edition of the Wwfa published
in 1816. $ Prior, I 187.