Then, as the old man babbled on, he descended from the fence,
shouldered his umbrella, and together the two started for the ferry.
He said he wanted to buy a new suit of clothes. That he had on he had
bought in 1807 in Germany, and it was beginning to get threadbare. So
the reporter led him over the river, put him in a horse-car, asked him
to send his address to the office, and the aged pilgrim nudged up into
a corner seat, put his valise on the floor and sailed serenely out of
sight amid the reverberation of the oaths hurled by the driver at an
Irish drayman who occupied the track in front of the car.




CHAPTER XXVI.

_THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF DR. PERKINS_.


It might be hardly fair to say that Doctor Perkins, a former resident
of the village, was a quack; he may be described in milder phrase
as an irregular practitioner. He belonged to none of the accepted
schools, but treated his patients in accordance with certain theories
of his own. The doctor had a habit of relating remarkable stories of
his own achievements, and the most wonderful of these was his account
of an attempt that he once made to cure a man named Simpson of
consumption by the process of transfusion of blood. The doctor,
according to his own story, determined to inject healthy blood into
Simpson's veins.

As no human being was willing to shed his blood for Simpson, the