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doned the hospital for the chorus of a musical comedy. Still
another, and he interested Philip because his uncouth man-
ner and interjectional speech did not suggest that he was
capable of any deep emotion, had felt himself stifle among
the houses of London. He grew haggard in shut-in spac-
es, and the soul he knew not he possessed struggled like a
sparrow held in the hand, with little frightened gasps and
a quick palpitation of the heart: he yearned for the broad
skies and the open, desolate places among which his child-
hood had been spent; and he walked off one day, without
a word to anybody, between one lecture and another; and
the next thing his friends heard was that he had thrown up
medicine and was working on a farm.
Philip attended now lectures on medicine and on
surgery. On certain mornings in the week he practised ban-
daging on out-patients glad to earn a little money, and he
was taught auscultation and how to use the stethoscope.
He learned dispensing. He was taking the examination in
Materia Medica in July, and it amused him to play with var-
ious drugs, concocting mixtures, rolling pills, and making
ointments. He seized avidly upon anything from which he
could extract a suggestion of human interest.
He saw Griffiths once in the distance, but, not to have
the pain of cutting him dead, avoided him. Philip had felt
a certain self-consciousness with Griffiths’ friends, some of
whom were now friends of his, when he realised they knew
of his quarrel with Griffiths and surmised they were aware
of the reason. One of them, a very tall fellow, with a small
head and a languid air, a youth called Ramsden, who was

Of Human Bondage