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Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928

"The Woodlanders"

Sometimes he'll talk to me as if I
were his own mother."
"Indeed."
"Yes. 'Grammer,' he said one day, when I asked him why he came
here where there's hardly anybody living, 'I'll tell you why I
came here. I took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones's
practice ends to the north of this district, and where Mr.
Taylor's ends on the south, and little Jimmy Green's on the east,
and somebody else's to the west. Then I took a pair of compasses,
and found the exact middle of the country that was left between
these bounds, and that middle was Little Hintock; so here I
am....' But, Lord, there: poor young man!"
"Why?"
"He said, 'Grammer Oliver, I've been here three months, and
although there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the
villages round, and a scattered practice is often a very good one,
I don't seem to get many patients. And there's no society at all;
and I'm pretty near melancholy mad,' he said, with a great yawn.
'I should be quite if it were not for my books, and my lab--
laboratory, and what not.


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