“Sometimes there are bright spots in my horizon, and I think myself more than repaid by a new shirt, or a couple of handkerchiefs—the gift of some poor, though grateful sewing girl. A few of these little treasures I prize with peculiar tenderness.”
“A tress of hair and a faded leaf
Are paltry things to a cynic’s eyes:
But to me they are keys that open the gates
Of a paradise of memories.”
Asking for a Fee.
A Boston M. D., who had been in practice fourteen years without accumulating any property, was about to abandon the profession, and, with this view, he applied to Fowler, the phrenologist, with the question, “What pursuit am I best adapted to follow?” Mr. Fowler, with whom he was unacquainted, said, “The practice of medicine;” but, at the same time, he assured the doctor that he ought to do business on a cash principle,—“accipe dum dolet,”—or employ a collector, as he would never collect his fees. Acting on this hint, the doctor returned to his practice, and in a few years was out of debt, and owned a fine residence.
In the matter of collecting fees only he was deficient.
A New York student—if report is true—began earlier to be impressed with the propriety of getting his fee in advance, as the following will show.
He went before the censors for examination. One of the board was a well-known penurious, fee-loving doctor, who, looking over the list of names of the applicants, said,—
“Mr. ——, if a patient came to your office, what would you first do?”
“I would ask him for a fee, sir,” was the prompt reply.
An old navy surgeon relates the following regarding examinations:—