An appointment was forthwith arranged for this serious affair, Doctor R——, of Whitby, being the examiner, and the Angel Inn, the place for the exercise. My Father, who had accompanied his candidate officer to the place of meeting, sent him, under guidance of a waiter, to a private room, where Dr. R—— was waiting for him, wishing him, with no small measure of anxious misgivings, good-luck in his examination. But the doctor was a _wise_ man, and his simple-minded forethought did him essential service.
In a very few minutes, to my Father’s much surprise and disappointment, as he naturally anticipated, the doctor returned. “How is this?” he exclaimed, “What is the matter, that you have returned so soon?” “Oh,” said the doctor, with a curious mixture of expression of subdued happiness and self-sufficient gratulation, “it’s all over—I’ve passed.” “Passed!” ejaculated my Father, “how is that possible? Doctor R—— had no time to examine you.” The doubt was settled by the handing over of a slip of paper containing a sufficient certificate. All curiosity to know how such an issue could have been attained in so limited a space of time, my Father impatiently asked, “But how was it, doctor? How were you examined?”
The doctor described the scene, as I well remember my Father’s account of it, in about the following terms:—“When I went to Doctor R.,” said the now happily appointed surgeon, “I spoke first; I said to him, Doctor R., the long and the short of the business is this—_if I can do no good, I’ll do no harm_.” “Then,” after a moment’s pause and consideration, with some little expression of cool surprise, as the candidate described it, “Then,” replied the examiner, “_you’ll do better than half the doctors in England_;” and, without a word more, he proceeded to write out a certificate.
Anecdotes of the doctor were not unfrequently told, with evident pleasant recollections, by my Father, who seemed, in an unusual degree, to have exercised a playful pleasantry with this simple-minded officer of many departments.
The cookery he managed with a fair measure of ability; and the breakfast cakes, though not always so _fair_ as they might have been, were sufficiently enjoyable in comparison of hard coarse biscuits. But a little disrelish was threatened by an accidental sight of the process of cake-making, which it required the full measure of indifference to trifling unfitnesses among the sailors of the mess to get over. One morning, early, my Father happened to pass by the place where the doctor was industriously preparing the paste for the oven. To his surprise he observed, and uttered an exclamation expressive of the surprise, that the hands of the manipulator of the elements of bread were not only unwashed, but most remote from the ordinary colour belonging to cleanliness. The doctor bore the exclamation with the coolest perseverance, and without even lifting his eyes from the bowl in which he was mixing the materials, contented himself with remarking, in reduplication of expression, the but ill-consoling fact, as to the effect of the operation on his hands, “the paste will clean them! the paste will clean them!”