qualifications, as well as the locations,-whether you are selfreliant and pushing or quiet and unobtrusive, because a physician may shine brightly in one rank who would be totally eclipsed in another. Whether you have abilities that will enable you to compete with the wisest and the best, and compel people in a populous center to employ you in preference to your neighbors; or whether, being less fully armed, you had better be satisfied with mediocrity, and become a modest country doctor in a less thickly settled village or town, where there is less competition and less talent to encounter; or go to the new States and grow with the growth of the settlements, or rise with the virgin villages, or spread with the cities that are there springing up like mushrooms. Remember, however, that:

Where there is nothing great to be done, a great man is impossible. and also that, wherever you cast your lot, you are not likely to arrive at more than you aim at.

Medicine, like everything else, thrives best in good ground. By all means seek to locate in a section to which you are suited; that will be congenial as a place to live in; and in which you are likely to have your health, get business, and be useful to your fellow-beings, and also earn a living:

Where you are sure to “get along,” and may "get up."

Bear in mind that unpopular opinions in politics or religion injure, and that, all else equal, you will be more likely to succeed and be contented in a community where your views, habits, and tastes are in harmony with the bulk of the people, morally, socially, and politically: where there are people you could respect and love, and where you will probably get the warm hand instead of the cold shoulder of good patients, and not have to hide your religion or your principles to get bread. No matter where you start, if, alas:—

You wear the bloom of youth upon your cheek

if you are guilty of the terrible sin of being youthful, you will hear the adjective "young" oftener than is pleasant and encounter up-hill difficulties that older physicians do not. "He looks too young"; "He lacks experience"; "He don't know anything”; “He has no practice; therefore is no good"; "He shouldn't doctor me," and "I'd send him off and get an older dokter," or "I'd have a perfesser," or a "speshulest," are among the often-heard expressions. Face them all bravely. It is better to have a future than a past. Never doubt; but with stout heart, cool head, and ready hand show the world that you have a good head on your young shoulders, and that you deserve to succeed, and success will surely come, yes:—

The world will find you.

Industry and enthusiasm, with strict attention to the opportunities that will present themselves for winning confidence in cases that are incidentally thrown into your hands, and a diligent cultivation of your talents; with promptness, civility, courtesy, and unobjectionable conduct to all, rich and poor alike; with pleasant manners, but no time to gossip, will bring it. The best introductory letters and testimonials you can have will be your own success founded on individual effort. Even a single event, or an accident, or a chance case may fortunately give you an introduction to extensive business. Avoid showing frivolity, and if you are smooth-faced and youthful-looking, unless you have some special reason for the contrary, let your moustache or beard, or both, grow, if they will; and remember that our Saviour and Alexander the Great each lived but thirtythree years, and Napoleon commanded the army of Italy at twenty-seven.

If you begin practice in a city or town, the location and appearance of your office will, more or less, affect your progress; and you will do well to select one easy of access; in a genteel, middle-class neighborhood; upon or very near one

or more of the main thoroughfares and convenient to either a thickly populated, old section or a rapidly growing, new one; but do not locate in a run-down, going-to-wreck section, or where there is an overwhelming majority of:—

The great unwashed.

The nearer to a large section of genteel, well-to-do business people, mechanics, etc., the better. If you were to locate on a back or unfrequented street, or other out-of-the-way place, or in some poor country place, where the land is unproductive and the population sparse, simply because there is but little or no near competition, it would naturally suggest to everybody that you had poor judgment, or were made of timorous, negative material, or lacked individuality or the spirit of enterprise and enthusiasm, and were either waiting for practice to come unsought, or else had distrust of your own acquirements. Besides:

He who does not show himself is overlooked.

Remember, in making your selection, that a physician cannot rely on his near neighbors for patronage; people in your immediate neighborhood may never employ you, while some farther away will want no one else.

If your first location disappoints you, change to another; but avoid frequent removals, and do not shift or change from one place to another unless it be clearly to better yourself. Select a place suited to your abilities and taste, and then be tenacious, even though you feel some disgust by familiar contact with persons socially beneath you, or at the difficulties that beset the receiving of expected fees, from coarse, ignorant, or unappreciative persons you have attended. Reputation is a thing that grows slowly, and every distant removal imperils part of the mover's practice, necessitates new efforts, and sometimes almost compels him to commence life over again.

Frequent removals in which no special betterment of position is shown also look like either natural instability or a never-dowell wandering spirit shifting about from lack of success, and suggest the question: If he had reputation and practice there, why did he come here?

Branch-offices are, as a rule, not desirable, for, in addition to the loss of time, and wear and tear in going to and fro, and double trouble in general, they are apt to create an uncertainty in the minds of those in need of the physician as to where and when he is most likely to be found. On estimating all the advantages and disadvantages, it will probably be seen that, as a rule, in these days of telephones and rapid transit, a plurality of offices increases greatly neither one's practice, one's popularity, nor one's income, but does add greatly to his expenses and his labors, and hence may be regarded as likely to prove more annoying than profitable. The same is true of office at one place and residence in another.

It has been said that:

A physician never gets bread
Till he has no teeth to eat it.

Be this as it may, it is risky for you, if a beginner with no influence and but little money, to locate in a section already overstocked with popular, energetic family physicians and specialists, as their superior advantages, established reputations, and warm competition may keep you limited and crippled for too many years, possibly until your old age sets in before a chance or a change come; hence:

Life is too short to waste.

Also, guard against locating close to large, free hospitals, and dispensaries, or among a whole troop of struggling beginners. Your first necessity is to possess knowledge and skill as a physician, your second is to find a field in which to exercise and display them; but, no matter where you locate, if you expect

to float idly down the tide of life, and look for success to be handed to you on a silver platter, or to leap into the race and begin away up with the leaders, or for business to follow immediately after your annunciation of being ready to receive it, and to perform a miracle, or to put a new feather in your cap, or get a fat fee every day, you will, except under very extraordinary circumstances, be rudely disappointed, because:

For the noblest man that lives

There still remains a conflict.

A corner house is naturally preferable to one in the middle of a row, since it is convenient for persons coming from all directions, and not only has facilities for constructing an officeentrance on the side street, leaving the front door free for family use, but also insures fresh air to the consulting-room, and a good light for examinations, operations, and study. If you board, do so in a genteel house, and in a respectable neighborhood, at or close to your office.

Regarding offices: Try to have a nice, comfortable, cheerful waiting-room, with a recessed front door; also, a good, light, airy, and accessible consulting-room of moderate dimensions, with, if at all convenient, two doors, one for the entrance and the other for the exit of patients,-for many of those who consult you will prefer to be let out through a passage or private door, and thus escape the gaze and possibly the whispering comments of others in waiting.

Exercise special care in their arrangement, and make them look fresh, neat, and clean outside; and give them a snug, bright, and cosy medical tone inside, neither as full as a wareroom nor as barren as a miser's apartments. Let their essential features show that their occupant is possessed of good breeding and cultivated taste, as well as learning and skill; and that they are not a lawyer's consulting-rooms, nor a clergyman's sanctum, nor an instrument-maker's shop, nor a smok