Weir Mitchell : his life and letters / by Anna Robeson Burr.

  • Burr, Anna Robeson Brown, 1873-1941.
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Weir Mitchell : his life and letters / by Anna Robeson Burr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rice pudding. Always we dined at two, but later, after our removal, at three, and at last at half past five, but this late hour had then for all good Philadelphia a flavor of wicked¬ ness. “When we moved to Walnut Street, we; were far uptown. We could skate at Broad and Walnut on a pond, and the pigs used to roam in from the Irish shanties on the out¬ skirts to seek for garbage. Pig-sticking, with pins set in a stout stick, was a famous amusement, to which many nar¬ row alleys and lanes lent themselves. “At the northeast corner, a vacant lot covered with paper-mulberries extended to the alley on the east, and a little deformed carpenter named Schwarzbach lived in an angle of this ground. One evening some older boys hoisted me over the fence to get a strayed ball and then ran away, I could not find it and tried in vain to get back over the fence. At last came night, and something about the ragged paper-mulberries filled me with fear. As I went to and fro they seemed to move their limbs; I have ever since dis¬ liked the trees. At last I saw through the cracks the old watchman come out of his queer polygonal box at the cor¬ ner to go on his round of lighting the street lamps. I called to him, as we boys all knew him well, and he fetched me out. “If we were not in rows of our own, we delighted to set the two younger boys at others, and battles among our¬ selves were not rare. As we grew older, all this rough life passed away. I never believed that the man must be like the boy. Motives multiply with life and are grim school¬ masters.