led into many practices and excesses which cost my guardian and myself
a good deal of money. At the close of my career as a student I found
myself aged twenty-one years, and the owner of some seven hundred
dollars--the rest of my small estate having disappeared variously within
the last two years. After my friends had gone to their homes in the
South I began to look about me for an office, and finally settled upon
very good rooms in one of the down-town localities of the Quaker City.
I am not specific as to the number and street, for reasons which may
hereafter appear. I liked the situation on various accounts. It had
been occupied by a doctor; the terms were reasonable; and it lay on the
skirts of a good neighborhood, while below it lived a motley population,
among which I expected to get my first patients and such fees as were to
be had. Into this new home I moved my medical text-books, a few bones,
and myself. Also, I displayed in the window a fresh sign, upon which was
distinctly to be read:

DR. E. SANDERAFT. Office hours, 8 to 9 A.M., 7 to 9 P.M.


I felt now that I had done my fair share toward attaining a virtuous
subsistence, and so I waited tranquilly, and without undue enthusiasm,
to see the rest of the world do its part in the matter. Meanwhile I
read up on all sorts of imaginable cases, stayed at home all through my
office hours, and at intervals explored the strange section of the town
which lay to the south of my office. I do not suppose there is anything
like it else where. It was then filled with grog-shops, brothels,
slop-shops, and low lodging-houses. You could dine for a penny on soup
made from the refuse meats of the rich, gathered at back gates by a
horde of half-naked children, who all told varieties of one woeful tale.
Here, too, you could be drunk for five cents, and be lodged for three,