The season was nearly over, and the negroes were striving to get the cotton out by Christmas, when one night at the supper table—the only meal I partook of with the family—my brother inquired, “How would you like to become a doctor, Madison?”
I thought he was jesting, and answered merely with a laugh. Become a doctor, a professional man, when I was too poor to go to a common school, was it not ludicrous?
“I am in earnest. Suppose a chance offered for you to become a student of medicine, would you accept it?” he said.
It was not the profession I would have selected had wealth given me a choice, but still it was a means of aquiring an education, a door through which I might possibly emerge to distinction, and I answered, “Show me the way, and I will accept without hesitation.”
He was not jesting. One of the first physicians in the state, taking a fancy to me, had offered to board me, clothe me, educate me in his profession, and become as a father to me, if I were willing to accept the kind offices at his hands.
I could scarcely realize the verity of what I had heard, yet 'twas true, and the ensuing new-year beheld me an inmate of the office of my benefactor.
He is now in his grave. Stricken down a soldier of humanity at his post, ere the meridian of life was reached. Living, he was called the widow's and orphan's friend, and the tears of all attested, at his death, that the proud distinction was undenied. I am not much, yet what I am he made me; and when my heart fails to thrill in gratitude at the silent breathing of his name, may it be cold to the loudest tones of life.
Behold me, then, a student of medicine, but yesterday a cotton-picker, illustrating within my own person, in the course of a few years, the versatility of American pursuits and character.
I was scarcely sixteen, yet I was a student of medicine, and had been, almost a printer, a cotton-picker, plough-boy, gin-driver, gentleman of leisure, cabin-boy, cook, scullion, and runaway, all distinctly referable to the young lady before-mentioned wearing “No. 2's,” when her foot required “fives.”