Notwithstanding my strict attention to my own interests, I have been rather sorely dealt with by fate upon several occasions, where, so far as I could see, I was vigilantly doing everything in my power to keep myself out of trouble or danger. I may as well relate one of them, merely to illustrate of how little value a man’s intellect may be when fate and the prejudices of the mass of men are against him.
One evening, late, I myself answered a ring at the bell, and found a small black boy on the steps, a shoeless, hatless little wretch, curled darkness for hair, and teeth like new tombstones. It was pretty cold, and he was relieving his feet by standing first on one and then on the other. He did not wait for me to speak.
“Hi, sah, Missey Barker she say to come quick away, sah, to Numbah 709 Bedford street.”
The locality did not look like pay, but it is hard to say in this quarter, because sometimes you found a well-to-do “brandy-snifter” (local for gin-shop) or a hard-working “leather-jeweler” (ditto for shoemaker), with next door, in a house better or worse, dozens of human rats for whom every police trap in the city was constantly set.
With a doubt in my mind as to whether I should find a good patient or some dirty nigger, I sought the place to which I had been directed. I did not like its looks; but I blundered up an alley and into a back room, where I fell over somebody, and was cursed and told to lie down and keep easy, or somebody, meaning the man stumbled over, would make me. At last I lit on a staircase which led into the alley, and, after much useless inquiry, got as high as the garret. People hereabout did not know one another, or did not want to know, so that it was of little avail to ask questions. At length I saw a light through the cracks in the attic door, and walked in. To my amazement, the first person I saw was a woman of about thirty-five, in pearl-gray Quaker dress—one of your quiet, good-looking people. She was seated on a stool beside a straw mattress upon which lay a black woman. There were three others crowded close around a small stove, which was red-hot—an unusual spectacle in this street. Altogether a most nasty den.
As I came in, the little Quaker woman got up and said: “I took the liberty of sending for thee to look at this poor woman. I am afraid she has the smallpox. Will thee be so kind as to look at her?” And with this she held down the candle toward the bed.
“Good gracious!” I said hastily, seeing how the creature was speckled “I didn’t understand this, or I would not have come. I have important cases which I cannot subject to the risk of contagion. Best let her alone, miss,” I added, “or send her to the smallpox hospital.”
Upon my word, I was astonished at the little woman’s indignation. She said just those things which make you feel as if somebody had been calling you names or kicking you—Was I really a doctor? and so on. It did not gain by being put in the ungrammatical tongue of Quakers. However, I never did fancy smallpox, and what could a fellow get by doctoring wretches like these? So I held my tongue and went away. About a week afterwards I met Evans, the dispensary man, a very common fellow, who was said to be frank.
“Helloa!” says he. “Doctor, you made a nice mistake about that darky at No. 709 Bedford street the other night. She had nothing but measles, after all.”
“Of course I knew,” said I, laughing; “but you don’t think I was going in for dispensary trash, do you?”