Thus, having an heir for the one, he had long looked about for an heir to the other, and now resolved on finding that heir in me.
So when we parted Dr.Faber made me promise to correspond with him regularly, and it was not long before he disclosed by letter the plans he had formed in my favour.

He said that he was growing old; his practice was beyond his strength; he needed a partner; he was not disposed to put up to sale the health of patients whom he had learned to regard as his children: money was no object to him, but it was an object close at his heart that the humanity he had served, and the reputation he had acquired, should suffer no loss in his choice of a successor.

In fine, he proposed that I should at once come to L---- as his partner, with the view of succeeding to his entire practice at the end of two years, when it was his intention to retire.
The opening into fortune thus afforded to me was one that rarely presents itself to a young man entering upon an overcrowded profession; and to an aspirant less allured by the desire of fortune than the hope of distinction, the fame of the physician who thus generously offered to me the inestimable benefits of his long experience and his cordial introduction was in itself an assurance that a metropolitan practice is not essential to a national renown.
I went, then, to L----, and before the two years of my partnership had expired, my success justified my kind friend's selection, and far more than realized my own expectations.

I was fortunate in effecting some notable cures in the earliest cases submitted to me, and it is everything in the career of a physician when good luck wins betimes for him that confidence which patients rarely accord except to lengthened experience.

To the rapid facility with which my way was made, some circumstances apart from professional skill probably contributed.