Dewey had always longed to be a lawyer and I learned that he had succeeded in gratifying this ambition, in spite of his heavy physical handicap: he became so able as a counselor that he gained a large practice and was specially skilful at preparing briefs for his partner to take into court. He was held in high honor for his charitable work and for many years led a successful, useful and happy life; but not long after our unexpected meeting he was complained of as a public nuisance and was actually arrested on this charge. His appearance and manner were really terrifying to people that did not know him, for in trying to avoid collision with passers-by his lack of control often caused him to act as if about to strike. The magistrate, before whom he was arraigned expressed extreme sympathy, but insisted that he keep out of the streets except when in a carriage or when properly attended, and poor Dewey took the affair so deeply to heart, that afterward he kept himself almost secluded from the world.
Mention of Philadelphia almost always suggests graveyards to me, not that the city prides itself on being “well laid-out,” but because I have visited all its cemeteries many times. When I left the Surgical Institute I boarded with a woman whose husband kept a large livery stable. I made friends of the drivers, and, as I was still under treatment and could not get about much, they would kindly give me an airing, whenever they were engaged for funerals, which was almost daily. This often meant an all day trip; my motherly landlady would put up a substantial lunch for me and the drivers granted me special privileges; that is, I was generally taken on the seat of the driver of the carriage which followed the hearse. The one that “carried the criers,” to use the stable parlance. It would not seem a cheerful way of spending a day, but I was always very much alive, and the drivers were as cheerful as if going to a wedding, and, while the ceremony at the grave was in progress, I ate my lunch with the hunger sauce that a long drive always supplies, and in summer I could generally find some flowers in the path to take home to my landlady. Besides, some of the cemeteries were so well kept that they were as sightly as gardens, which reminds me of a story that I once inflicted on the Clover Club of Philadelphia, as follows:
“While dining at my hotel yesterday, I noticed that the water looked muddy, so I complained to the waiter. He admitted that it looked bad, but said it was really very good water.
“He Said it was Very Good Water.”
“‘But,’ I continued, ‘they tell me that the water here passes through a graveyard (Laurel Hill Cemetery) before reaching the people.’
“‘That’s right, sir,’ the waiter replied. ‘But it’s a first-class graveyard; only the best people are buried there.’”
I have traveled much in foreign countries, but Philadelphia is the only place in which I was compelled to beg the protection of the American flag. I had been engaged by Mr. John Wanamaker to “say something” to his great Sunday-school on two consecutive evenings. Being a New Yorker, I did not care to spend the intervening hours in Philadelphia, so after leaving the platform the first evening, I took the ten o’clock train for home. As haste was necessary, I merely changed my evening coat and vest for street clothes. In New York next day, I changed my black trousers for gray, attended to so much business that I had to take a late afternoon train, and did not realize until it was almost time to go on the platform, in a “swallow-tail” coat that I had no black trousers. Worse still my figure was such that I could not be fitted from any clothing store in the city. For a moment my invention was at a standstill, but the people were not, and the hall was filling rapidly. I consulted the committee hastily, and though they were greatly amused by my suggestion, they acted upon it promptly: they moved a table to the centre of the platform, draped it with the stars and stripes, and all the people on the platform arranged themselves, so that I could be unseen as I passed behind them to the table, where only my coat and vest could be seen, the objectionable trousers being hidden by my country’s flag.
Small wonder that I have a merry remembrance of Philadelphia.