"'A dog-fight,' shouted
Bob, and was off, and so was I, both of us all hot, praying that it might
not be over before we were up . . . Dogs like fighting; old Isaac (Watts,
not Walton) says they 'delight' in it, and for the best of all reasons;
and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. This is a
very different thing from a love of making dogs fight." And this was the
most famous of all dog-fights--since the old Irish Brehons settled the
laws of that sport, and gravely decided what was to be done if a child
interfered, or an idiot, or a woman, or a one-eyed man--for this was the
dog-fight in which Rab first was introduced to his historian.
Six years passed after this battle, and Dr. Brown was a medical student
and a clerk at Minto Hospital. How he renewed his acquaintance there,
and in what sad circumstances, with Rab and his friends, it is
superfluous to tell, for every one who reads at all has read that story,
and most readers not without tears. As a medical student in Edinburgh,
Dr. Brown made the friendship of Mr. Syme, the famous surgeon--a
friendship only closed by death. I only saw them once together, a very
long time ago, and then from the point of view of a patient. These
occasions are not agreeable, and patients, like the old cock which did
not crow when plucked, are apt to be "very much absorbed"; but Dr.
Brown's attitude toward the man whom he regarded with the reverence of a
disciple, as well as with the affection of a friend, was very remarkable.
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