ill. Hay said in his emotional way:

"Broadbent is the only doctor I believe in. If you don't bring Broadbent bring nobody. Let me die."

But Broadbent said no. He was starting to catch a train for a life and death consultation in the country. He must not miss his train.

"But there's time enough. See Hay on your way to the train. Give him five minutes and let somebody else do the rest."

"I shall let somebody else do the whole."

"Hay will see nobody unless he sees you first."

"There are plenty of men as good as I am. I will give you half a dozen names."

"I want none of them. I want you. You know you can stop your carriage for five minutes as you drive to the station."

"My carriage has not come round."

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"My hansom is at the door. Drive with me and let your carriage follow."

Finally he did. When he came out of Hay's bedroom he was a very angry man. He said:

"Your friend has a bad attack of indigestion. He will be all right in an hour."

And away he went. An angry man is not always a just man. Hay--God bless his memory--thought himself suffering from a heart attack. There is, I believe, a medical analogy between the symptoms of heart disease and violent indigestion. I had left him lying on the floor almost in convulsions. How was he to know it was not heart disease, to which he believed himself subject? Hay was not then, to the English, so great a man as he afterwards became. He had not been Ambassador, nor Secretary of State, nor dictated to the European Powers a new policy in the East. I ought not to use the word dictated. It is not descriptive of Hay's methods, which were persuasive. Nor does one Power dictate to another. Let us say he had secured by the adroit use of accepted diplomatic methods the adhesion of the European Powers to his proposals in respect of China. No American Secretary of State had ever made so original or beneficent a use of his power. He had brought his country once for all into the great world-partnership of great Powers the world over.

Sir William Broadbent did not foresee that. He could not. If he had he might have been less angry, for he was thought to be considerate of greatness in all its forms or in many of them. He {362} liked patients of distinction, which is no reproach. He had many of them. But the odd thing was that he seemed never quite able to overcome his awe of rank and title. In a company of persons of rank his manner was not that of an equal. He used to address persons of rank as a servant addresses them; or it might be kinder to say as inferiors in position used to address their superiors two or three generations ago. And always with embarrassment.

Another celebrated man of medicine, Sir Andrew Clark, had an almost factitious renown as Mr. Gladstone's doctor, and Mr. Gladstone was a very good patient, in one sense. One thing this famous physician had; he had absolute confidence in himself. Or, if no doctor has that, he had enough to give his patient confidence, which is perhaps not less important. Old Abernethy used to say: "The second best remedy is best if the patient thinks it best." And I suppose that is as true of doctors as of remedies. If Sir Andrew doubted, he never allowed you to see that he doubted. Like all these great men, he had a social as well as medical popularity and he was very good company at dinner and after.

One evening I met him at a pleasant house where there was a good cook and the company, including the host, did not exceed six; all men. We all noticed that Sir Andrew drank champagne. Presently one of the men said:

"You don't allow us champagne, Sir Andrew, but you allow it to yourself."

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"Oh, I have had a long day, and I am very tired, and I must have it. Besides, when I get home there'll be thirty or forty letters to answer."

So the champagne flowed on, like the water, as Mr. Evarts said, at one of President Hayes's White House dinners. Sir Andrew drank no more than anybody else. It was only because of his habit of prohibiting it to others that we noticed whether his glass was full or empty. As we went upstairs I said to him:

"Do you mean that after all that champagne you are going to answer thirty or forty letters when you get home?"

"No, certainly not."

"Then what did you mean?"

"What I meant was that after my champagne I should not care whether they were answered or not."

It was Sir Andrew Clark who said of Mr. Gladstone, some fifteen years before his death at eighty-eight that there was no physiological reason why he should not live to be 120. If that was meant as a prophecy it had the fate of most prophecies.

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