The late Dr. Huxham, a physician of some eminence in his day, when speaking of Asclepiades, the Roman empiric, says: "This man from a declaimer turned physician, and set himself up to oppose all the physicians of his time; and the novelty of the thing bore him out, as it frequently doth the quacks of the present time; and ever will while the majority of the world are fools."

But they, with their necks craned out all pointing one way, swam to and fro in the middle of the pond, never stopping their quack, quack quack, and keeping time too, for they all quacked in chorus.

Not far from these, a quack from one scaffold was descanting on the virtues of his medicines, whilst a preacher from another was holding forth to the graver part of the crowd, the joys and terrors of another life; and yet farther on, a motley groupe were listening to a blind beggar, who was singing to the music of a sort of rude guitar.

The American medical man called in to treat Russie proved as great a quack as the Greek, and his case grew worse.

Nearer and nearer they would come, till a swift rush out of the grass sent them off headlong, splashing and quacking with crazy clamor.

The memory is still fresh of flocks of teal by the "Green Stores" on the Neck; but the teal and the "Stores" are gone, and perhaps the last black duck has quacked on the river, and the last whistler taken his final flight.

Quackery and astrology, the latter of which often served as a mask to the former, appear to have been at one time a kind of Castor and Pollux; quackery, however, it would seem has outlived astrology, for there are more who would swallow the nostrum of the quack than the flatulent bolus of the fortune-tellers.