“Go to the pillow of disease,
Where night gives no repose,
And on the cheek where sickness preys
Bid health to plant the rose.
Go where the sufferer ready lies
To perish in his doom,
Snatch from the grave his closing eyes,
And bring a blessing home.”
A Peter-Funk Doctor.
One day, passing up Washington Street, Boston, I detected a familiar voice issuing from a store, on the window-panes of which lately vacated premises was pasted “Removal,” and, looking in, I saw a man mounted on a box selling a pinchbeck watch. The place looked a deal like a New York Peter-Funk shop. However that may have been, I recognized the hired auctioneer as once having been a medical practitioner. He was a graduate of C—— Medical College. Owing to his honesty and lack of acquisitiveness among dishonest and niggardly creatures in ——, whom he faithfully served in his earlier efforts at his profession, he was compelled to resort to other means of gaining a support for himself and family, and finally was reduced to clerking and selling goods for those whose business tact exceeded his own.
THE PETER-FUNK PHYSICIAN.
Selling Out.
Everybody has heard of Leavitt, the dry little joker, the humorous and popular auctioneer of Hartford, who sells everybody, and everything, from a riddled sauce-pan to a nine-acre lot in the suburbs.
One fine day he was selling, in front of the State House, a various collection of articles, with a lot of ancient and modern household furniture and traps that would have made Mrs. Toodles happy for a six months, and was “looking sharp” for some one to help him over a tough place on an odd lot, when he discovered in the crowd a pleasant, open, upturned countenance,—a sort of oasis in the desert,—to whom he at once appealed for assistance. A knowing wink from young rusticus was the response, a return from the auctioneer, and the bids went on with astonishing rapidity, till down went a big lot of goods, which everybody seemed to have wanted—a truckle-bed and fixings, with earthen ware, etc.
“Yours, sir—what’s your name?” said L. to the young man from the agricultural district.
“Mine? O, no; I didn’t bid on ’em,” said rustic.