A DOCTOR’S STORY

[Welland Telegraph, 9 January 1891]

Does it ever occur to our readers what romances, what curious secrets, come to the care of a doctor? Quite as improbable events happen in real life as ever found in the most sensational novels on the shelves of a circulating library, and the experience of any physician would furnish enough stories to make the fortune of a paragrapher.  One of these came under my notice. Eighteen years ago I was a struggling young physician. I had just graduated with credit from McGill, but I was poor and unknown, and my chance of practice were vague indeed. An office in a stuffy house in a poor neighborhood, where an untidy, slatternly landlady was my sole resource for domestic comfort, represented my means, and at times my heart was as low as my finances, as I brooded over my prospects for the future.

It was late, on a bitter night in January, and the crisp snow crackled sharply under my feet of the chance pedestrian, that my office bell rang sharply, and I hurried down at once to the door. Standing in a little group were two or three men supporting the unconscious figure of an old man, the blooding froth on whose lips told me he was injured internally. “Bring him in  at once,” and as the good fellows laid down the senseless figure on the sofa, one of them whispered to me, “Run over, doctor, by a sleigh, and he seems to be badly hurt.”

Badly hurt he was, indeed, and cursory examination showed me at once that that to move him further would be to ensure his death. Goodness knows I was poor enough; but I could not send a fellow creature to his death deliberately, so I countermanded the call for the ambulance, and resolved to do the best I could for him myself. He was poorly dressed, and in his pockets were only a bunch of keys, and a few cents in money. He looked like a poor clerk out of employment, and certainly, not like one able to pay an expensive doctor’s bill. Still, he was my first serious hurt patient, and, as I sat by the sofa, on which I had him laid, and listened to his low, muttering delirium, I resolved to do my best for him. At last, thanks to my unremitting attention to this, my only patient, nature swept away the clouds that fever had raised in his brain, and he was able to whisper that his name was Fanshawe, and that he was an American. Of his circumstances, I knew nothing, nor would he say anything, and I therefore concluded that his pride prevented him telling me that there was no possibility of his ever paying me for my services.

Four months in all he passed in my little stuffy room; and during that time his quaint ways, his patience under suffering, and his gratitude for our care, so won upon me that I grieved when the day came that he must take his departure. Just as he took his leave, he said: “I cannot pay your bill, now, doctor, but God bless you for your kindness to a poor old man. I will send you some money from my  home.” With these words he turned  abruptly away, and I went back into my room which seemed more lonely and common-place than ever before. A week rolled by and one day the postman rapped sharply at the door. Thinking it some dun, I stepped listlessly into the hall, where he handed me a registered letter with an American postmark. Hastily opening it, I saw a few firm decided lines in the centre of the page. They read:

“Doctor-Accept the enclosed as a small testimony of my undying gratitude and esteem.-H. Fanshawe.”

The enclose was a check for $20,000, and I was made a man for life. My poverty stricken patient was a millionaire.