“Mother, baby, and officer are doing as well as can be expected!”
We have seen the “officer.” He did better than was “expected.”
The writer was on a Fulton ferry boat in the winter of 1857, when a similar scene occurred. A German woman was taken in pain. A whisper was passed to a female passenger; a policeman was summoned from outside the ladies’ (?) cabin; the male occupants were ejected,—even myself and another medical student, and the husband of the patient. The latter remonstrated, and demonstrated his objection to the momentary separation by beating and shouting at the saloon door.
“Katharina! Katharina!” he shouted, “keep up a steef upper lips!”
This roaring attracted nearly all the men from the opposite side of the boat, who crowded around him and the door, to learn the cause of the Teutonic demonstrations of alternate fear, anger, and encouragement.
“Got in himmel! Vere you leefs ven you’s t’ home? Vich a man can’t come mit his vife, altogedder? Hopen de door, unt I preaks him mit mine feest; don’t it?” So he kept on, alternately cursing the policeman and encouraging “Katharina,” till we reached the Brooklyn side, and left the ferry boat.
