My uncle had been beguiled in New York by a flaming pictorial advertisement of palatial packet-boats, drawn by spirited horses galloping at full speed. When we entered our little craft, we found it so crowded that we were wretchedly uncomfortable. Possibly, in our ignorance, we had not taken the fine packet of the advertisement. Our own boat crawled along at a snail's pace, making three or four miles an hour. Many of the passengers left it every morning, preferring to walk ahead and wait for us until night. We made the journey in five or six days. The heat, the discomfort, the mosquitoes! Who can imagine the misery of that journey? Fresh from the mountains and gorgeous sunsets of Albemarle, we found little to admire in the scenery.
As to the Falls, which we had come so far to see—they and their entourage made me ill. It was all so weird and strange; the dark forests of evergreen, pine, and spruce; the sullen Indians, squatted around blankets, embroidering with beads and porcupine quills; the hapless little Indian babies strapped to boards and swinging in the trees, and over all, the heavy roar of the waters. The immensity of their power filled me with terror. I longed to get away from the awful spectacle.
The best part of a journey is the home-coming. The dear familiar house,—we never knew how good it was,—the welcome of affectionate, cheerful servants; the dogs beside themselves with joy, the perfect peace, leisure, relaxation! Flowers, fruit, and much accumulated mail awaited us. My keen eye detected a large-enveloped paper from Philadelphia, and my nimble fingers quickly abstracted it, unperceived, from the miscellaneous heap, and consigned it to a bureau drawer in my room, the key of which went into my pocket.
In the privacy of my bedtime hour—having bolted the door—I drew it forth. Oh, what inane foolishness! What sad trash! Tearing it into strips, I lighted each one at my candle and saw the whole burned—burned to impalpable smoke and degraded dust and ashes; consigned then and there to utter oblivion!
My uncle often wondered why the story had not appeared. There was a perilous moment when he threatened to write to the publishers, but I persuaded him to be patient and dignified about it, and the matter, after a while, was forgotten. Never was an uncle so managed by a young girl!
I think my great card with him was my interest in his office work. Physicians compounded and prepared their own prescriptions sixty-five years ago. He delighted in me when I donned my ample apron and, armed with scales and spatula, gravely assumed the airs of a physician's assistant. I knew all his professional manœuvres to satisfy hypochondriac old gentlemen and nervous old ladies. I learned to make the innocuous pills which "helped" them "so much," and the carminative for the aching little stomachs of the babies. Great have been the strides since then in the noblest of all professions!
Mrs. Fanny Bland Randolph.
Just here I venture to illustrate some of the radical changes in the practice of medicine by extracts from a letter written by Dr. Theodorick Bland to his sister, Fanny Bland Randolph. The letter is copied from the original in the possession of the late Joseph Bryan of Richmond, Virginia.