Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1919-09-27 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THE THREE KINDS.  We have been very fortunate in our physicians --that is to say, we have had them all of the Three Kinds—and yet are alive, and supped at Ambrose's on Thumaday. First, we have had. and have now, your men of education—your scholar and your gentleman—who is as open, bowel., and sinoere at your bedside as at your dinner table, and who would be disinterestedly sorry were you, in spite of his efforts to detain you here, to go to anoth.tr and a twtter world. Experience has strengthentil ;Intl refincd his sagaeity into an instinct ; apt! ws.a skill and knowledge can do hr J; ; 11:-. should we, which may be highly Lc, die to-morrow. He is no monger of mywe. monosyllables—no silent head-shaker. n.. mute, with one fearful forefinger or, vci.! pulse and two horrid eyes fixed on your :; you are faint with the ticking of that . ~Nronometer in your brain—while you din% yi,u see visions of undertakers, a hearse, and many mourning coaches, a deep-dug wet. hole, much shovelling, the sudden off-taking of hats, and the breaking up of anything but a convivial party, all discussing your character, and wondering if you have died rich or poor. Every smile on his face ia worth a foe, and von set death and the devil at defiance.  , • t  The second kind is your Old Woman. 'k A ping imbeciiity reigns over face and figure— his speech is a tretel Of terror, fitutter. and lisp; and he smiles eo ss-e,etly that you pluck up courage to believ that you r-annot possibly be near the last agonies. His Role anxiety is &bout your bowels, he beseeches you to be kept quiet, administers his pill, tells you mot to allow yourself to be flurr'fed, and as be trips bustling away and kelas talking to himself and your housekeeper ;;Ic and out of the street  "I; • 1')i:-(1 Qua. .1:-- and from him 110::vr.n preservP all the f.ubscril*.rs t ths "Weekly Gazette." Hard-hearted, coarse, vulgar, greedy, proEgate, and tuipnuciplod in hi unfearing ignorance, he treats you as if you  were a horse, and drenches you with drugs. Hence so many widows left with eight children, so many men six feet high on Monday and only six feet long on Saturday fellowing„ letters announcing the death in place of marriage sheets, funeral-shrouds instead of trips to the Trossachs in jaunting ears, rattling along eight miles an hour, journeys to the place of interment in the Groy Priars and the West Kirk Churchyard in a vehicle that, although drawn by s'x horses, goes nodding on at a snail's pace, and lands you in the dirt at last. The quack attends impatiently the patient corpse in his own chariut, and then drives off to give the coup-de-graee to another incumbent.  The house visited by the physician is known from the aspects of the inmates. There is an airy freedom in the ,figure of a laughSug lustre of lip and eye as if health and happiness had stood behnd them at the mirror. This you seldom or never meet wi:•11 in a :louse annoyed by the Old Woman or cursed by the Quack. Not that the Old Woman often dos much serious mischief to the bairns ; that is to say, she seldom either kills them outright or for life ruins their constitution. But then she teaches them to have recourse, on the most most in.significant occasions, to small bottles and boxes, so ;hat not the slighest touch of a sore throat, a headache, or a cholic is sittfeted Lo go off of his own accord, but must ho ejected by drop or pill. The Old Woman frequently infects his patients with his own fiddle-faddle.  As for the Quack, when he has fairly established himself in a house—farewell domestio peaoe! He 18 a paid and privileged murderer. All your fam ly, even when at their highest health, are more or less siek ; when allowed to he ill they are at death's door; and when they die, it is in some startling and shocking manner, enough to break your heart and turn your brain. Although two children are perhaps born to you in three years, your family never incre.a,ses, and by the time you and your wife are fifty, looking dismallv about the houae, you see youraelvea to be childless, and feel yourselves to be old people. --Wm Jones, Thorns-by.