IN a miserable old house, in Commerce street, north of Pratt street Baltimore,—there are fine stores there now—lived a shoemaker, whose wife took a particular fancy to me as a doctor, (I never felt much flattered by the preference,) and would send for me whenever she was sick. I could do no less than attend her ladyship. For a time I tried, by pretty heavy bills, to get rid of the honour; but it wouldn't do. Old Maxwell, the husband, grumbled terribly, but managed to keep out of my debt. He was the reputed master of his house; but I saw enough to satisfy me that if he were master, his wife was mistress of the master.
Maxwell had three or four apprentices, out of whom he managed to get a good deal of work at a small cost. Among these was a little fellow, whose peculiarly delicate appearance often attracted my attention. He seemed out of place among the stout, vulgar-looking boys, who stitched and hammered away from morning until night in their master's dirty shop.
"Where did you get that child?" I asked of the shoemaker one day.
"Whom do you mean? Bill?"
"Yes, the little fellow you call Bill."
"I took him out of pure charity. His mother died about a year and a half ago, and if I hadn't taken him in, he would have gone to the poor house as like as not."
"Who was his mother?"
"She was a poor woman, who sewed for the slopshops for a living—but their pay won't keep soul and body together."
"And so she died?"
"Yes, she died, and I took her child out of pure charity, as I have said."