I didn’t, the day I pitched out of the boat.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The Doctor.
DEAR reader, before bidding adieu to San Francisco, let your one-legged friend introduce you to a noble citizen of that cosmopolitan city, whom, for the sake of a name, shall be styled Dr. Charles Rowell of Kearny street.
Let us call this chapter an imaginary sketch of what might be, what has been, and what will be. Let us suppose your friend John Smith on a crutch to be only mortal: let us suppose him, after all, an ordinary object for—
“The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,”
as well as subject to—
“The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to:”
let us suppose him a human being who eats, drinks—yes, drinks!—sleeps, and indulges in other like amusements, and let us suppose him susceptible of suffering, when the means of these enjoyments are, by any chance, temporarily withheld. Let us even suppose that he may be “broke,” sick, and “in a strange land,” all at once. Let us suppose that the “Panama Fever,” which is “no respecter of persons” may lay hold of him on any proper occasion, and let us suppose that poverty which is another “no-respecter-of-persons,” may happen to pay him a friendly visit about the same time. Let us suppose both visitors going hand in hand and calling on John Smith at the same time at his lodging-house in San Francisco.
In asking the reader to assume all this, I do not positively assert that such things did actually happen to John Smith himself, in this connection, but I can testify to the substantial truth of what I am about to relate, and it is no harm to make use of Mr. Smith as an actor.