For
two days I could not raise a stamp to send a letter. I
have smiled when I have read in my evening paper of the
privations of our fellows in Egypt. Their broken
victuals would have been a banquet to me. However, what
odds how you take your carbon and nitrogen and oxygen, as
long as you DO get it? The garrison of Oakley Villa
has passed the worst, and there is no talk of surrender.
It was not that I have had no patients. They have
come in as well as could be expected. Some, like the
little old maid, who was the first, never returned. I
fancy that a doctor who opened his own door forfeited
their confidence. Others have become warm partisans.
But they have nearly all been very poor people; and when
you consider how many one and sixpences are necessary in
order to make up the fifteen pounds which I must find
every quarter for rent, taxes, gas and water, you will
understand that even with some success, I have still
found it a hard matter to keep anything in the
portmanteau which serves me as larder. However, my boy,
two quarters are paid up, and I enter upon a third one
with my courage unabated. I have lost about a stone, but
not my heart.
I have rather a vague recollection of when it was
exactly that my last was written. I fancy that it must
have been a fortnight after my start, immediately after
my breach with Cullingworth. It's rather hard to know
where to begin when one has so many events to narrate,
disconnected from each other, and trivial in themselves,
yet which have each loomed large as I came upon them,
though they look small enough now that they are so far
astern.
Pages:
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252