Dr. Nikola's Experiment

It is a sad enough thing at any time for a man to have to confess himself a failure, but I think it will be admitted that it is doubly so at that period of his career when he is not only young enough to have some flickering sparks of ambition left, but old enough to appreciate at their proper value the overwhelming odds against which he has been battling so long and with such conspicuously poor success. Such was my case. I had entered the medical profession seemingly with everything in my favour. My father had built up a reputation for himself, and, what he prized still more, a competency as a country practitioner of the old-fashioned sort in the west of England. I was his only child, and, as he was in the habit of saying, he looked to me to carry the family name up to those dizzy heights at which he had often gazed, but on which he had never aspired to set his foot. A surgeon I was to be, willy-nilly, and it may have been a throw-back to the parental instinct alluded to above, which led me at once to picture myself flying at express speed, regardless of cost, across Europe in obedience to the summons of some potentate whose life and throne depended upon my dexterity and knowledge. In due course I entered a hospital, and followed the curriculum in the orthodox fashion. It was not, however, until I was approaching the end of my student days that I was burnt with that fire of enthusiasm which was destined, ultimately, to consume me altogether.