Osler and other papers / by William Sydney Thayer.

  • William Sydney Thayer
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Osler and other papers / by William Sydney Thayer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    83/406 page 67
    then, after about twenty minutes, he ran away and left the old doctor with me! ” One day Jones started to comment in a light vein on something which a rather amusing figure, an old physician from a distant point, had said or done. Fowler changed the subject abruptly. Once again, when he said something about the commercial attitude of Dr. C., Fowler again changed the subject. In his presence gossip, or criticism of a colleague was im¬ possible. Fowler was a quickening spirit. Wherever he passed the world smiled. Listen to this incident told by one of his dear friends—a wonderful picture of him as he appeared just after his marriage. “ In the deepening twilight of a late autumn after¬ noon nothing could look harder nor more uncompro¬ mising than Jefferson Place. A poor woman, utterly worn, carrying an ill child, laboured up the square, and then suddenly sat down with a sigh on the stone coping bordering the grass slope. The child’s heavy head turned restlessly about on the woman’s bosom; her whole body sagged over the baby to keep him from falling. About them was the bodily fatigue and mental inertia of the hopelessly poor. “ The square was almost empty—a newsboy or two, a stray cat, and a young woman wondering what she should do. “ Suddenly the scene changed. From being hard and sordid, it became warm and human and radiant. Ap¬ parently the gayest of men came up the square, hum¬ ming to himself, and adroitly twirling his cane. He wore a silk hat and a dress overcoat, his eye glanced here and there, amusedly at the ugly fountain, rever¬ ently at a little fleecy half moon, and then fell upon the woman and child. Instantly the twirling cane made a playful dive at the child. Then cane and gloves were
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