The third note was also a joint production, written upon brown paper and tacked upon the barn door of a village farmer, who had, as we thought, misused us. It was not a lengthy note, the words being “Who will pull your weeds next year?” This note was occasioned by the farmer engaging us for a stipulated price to rid a field of a large weed that is common there, and a great hindrance to the healthy growth of other products. The weeds were tall and strong, and the pittance we were to receive was ridiculously small for the amount of work. But when we had finished and held out our tiny, blistered hands for our pay, it was not forthcoming. We went again and again for it, and being convinced it was useless to go more, we returned quietly with two large baskets to where we had piled the weeds, to be dried preparatory to their being burned, and very soon thereafter the seeds from all that we had pulled were sown broadcast over the field again. It is, perhaps, a small matter to speak of here, but it so well illustrates the principle that many times in my after life influenced me to make my conscience become blind, that I thought well to write of it.
My first business ventures consisted of a pair of twin calves that I raised, and later to bring home, on a stormy winter day, a tiny lamb given to me by a farmer, which, in time, together with a few others purchased later, expanded into a flock of about forty sheep. Both ventures were failures, however, from a financial point of view, but the failures were nothing compared with the collapse of the innumerable air castles which had depended upon the result of these speculations.
One day I found a purse containing about $40; an immense sum at that time to me. In the purse were other papers showing me plainly who the owner was. I know that I hesitated, but only for a moment; and having made up my mind could not too soon return it to its owner, and because I had hesitated was adverse to receiving the reward offered me.
When I was about nineteen years of age (the preceding years having been filled in for the most part with six to nine months each year of preparatory studies and the balance of the time devoted to work and teaching) I was prepared to enter the Dartmouth College, but instead of doing so, I decided to commence a medical course at once, and, with this object in view, I matriculated at the University of Vermont, at Burlington, where I remained one college year, deciding, before it had expired, to complete my course at some larger college, and the following September found me at Ann Arbor, Mich. After having paid my college fees, bought my books and other articles necessary for my second year in college, I found myself hundreds of miles away from friends and relatives, and with about $60 in money with nine months of hard study before me, allowing but little time for outside work if I wished to keep up in my studies with the other members of my class.
About this time I first became acquainted with a Canadian, a fellow-student, and from then until the time of his death he was one of the very few intimate friends I have ever allowed myself.
The limits of this book will not allow me to write the many quaint and some ghastly experiences of our medical education were I otherwise disposed to do so. Suffice it to say, that they stopped far short of desecration of country graveyards, as has been repeatedly charged, as it is a well-known fact that in the State of Michigan all the material necessary for dissection work is legitimately supplied by the State. At the end of my junior year I entered into an agreement with a fluent representative of a Chicago firm to spend my vacation in the northwest portion of Illinois representing his firm as a book agent. In this venture I committed the first really dishonest act of my life.
The firm as well as the book itself, from the sale of which I had been assured I could earn hundreds of dollars during my vacation, was a fraud, and after the most strenuous efforts, having succeeding in selling a sufficient number to defray my expenses and pay my return fare to Ann Arbor, I came back without making a settlement with the firm there, and for the remainder of my vacation earned what money I could in and about the college city.
I could hardly count my Western trip a failure, however, for I had seen Chicago.
The remainder of my medical course differed very little from the first two years; filled perhaps more completely with hard work and study, and almost wholly devoid of pleasure and recreation. At last, however, in June, 1884, our examinations were passed, our suspense was ended and I left Ann Arbor with my diploma, a good theoretical knowledge of medicine, but with no practical knowledge of life and of business. After taking a vacation of less than one week in my old New Hampshire home, I went to Portland, Maine, and engaged with a large business firm of that city to represent them in Northern New York in the sale of their products; my prime object being to find some favorable location in this way where I could become a practitioner. Such an opening was not easily found, however, and I accepted a winter school to teach at Mooers Forks, N. J., and later opened an office in that village. Here I stayed for one year doing good and conscientious work, for which I received plenty of gratitude but little or no money, and in the fall of 1885 starvation was staring me in the face, and finally I was forced to sell first one and then the last of my two horses, and having done this I resolved to go elsewhere before all of my means were again exhausted.
During my long years there in New York I had abundant time to work out the details of a scheme that my University friend, before referred to, and myself had talked over during our hungry college days as a possible last resort in case our medical practice proved a failure; and from certain letters I had received from him, I judged that he, too, had not found all his hardships at an end upon receiving his diploma. I therefore went to where he was located, and found that though his experience had been less disheartening than my own, it had from a pecuniary standpoint been far from successful. During this visit we carefully planned the following method of obtaining money:—