 chairman? Because he is
not my chairman, you know. I have no connection with the company, farther than
giving them, for a certain fee and reward, my poor opinion as a medical man,
precisely as I may give it any day to Jack Noakes or Tom Styles. Then why do I
say our chairman? Simply because I hear the phrase constantly repeated about me.
Such is the involuntary operation of the mental faculty in the imitative biped
man. Mr. Crimple, I believe you never take snuff? Injudicious. You should.«
    Pending these remarks on the part of the doctor, and the lengthened and
sonorous pinch with which he followed them up, Jonas took a seat at the board:
as ungainly a man as ever he has been within the reader's knowledge. It is too
common with all of us, but it is especially in the nature of a mean mind, to be
overawed by fine clothes and fine furniture. They had a very decided influence
on Jonas.
    »Now you two gentlemen have business to discuss, I know,« said the doctor,
»and your time is precious. So is mine; for several lives are waiting for me in
the next room, and I have a round of visits to make after - after I have taken
'em. Having had the happiness to introduce you to each other, I may go about my
business. Good bye. But allow me, Mr. Montague, before I go, to say this of my
friend who sits beside you: That gentleman has done more, sir,« rapping his
snuff-box solemnly, »to reconcile me to human nature, than any man alive or
dead. Good bye!«
    With these words Jobling bolted abruptly out of the room, and proceeded in
his own official department, to impress the lives in waiting with a sense of his
keen conscientiousness in the discharge of his duty, and the great difficulty of
getting into the Anglo-Bengalee; by feeling their pulses, looking at their
tongues, listening at their ribs, poking them in the chest, and so forth;
though, if he didn't well know beforehand that whatever kind of lives they were,
the Anglo-Bengalee would accept them readily, he was far from being the Jobling
that his friend considered him; and was not the original Jobling, but a spurious
imitation.
    Mr. Crimple also departed on the business of the morning; and Jonas
Chuzzlewit and Tigg were left alone.
    »I learn from our friend,« said Tigg, drawing his chair towards Jonas with a
winning ease
