Memoirs of Pliny Earle, M.D : with extracts from his diary and letters (1830-1892) and selections from his professional writings ( 1839-1891) / Ed., with a general introduction, by F. B. Sanborn.

  • Sanborn, F. B. (Franklin Benjamin), 1831-1917
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs of Pliny Earle, M.D : with extracts from his diary and letters (1830-1892) and selections from his professional writings ( 1839-1891) / Ed., with a general introduction, by F. B. Sanborn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    Leicester and all the adjoining towns engaged in this work; for the holes in the leather which held the card-teeth were pricked by a hand-machine ( pricking-machine ), that could be used in a farm- house. I often worked at this, rather as a pastime than a labor. We had several routes in which a horse and wagon was sent out from the factory for a circuit of from fifteen to twenty-five miles, among the farmers, to carry the leathers and teeth to the setters, and collect from them the finished cards. Others, living nearer, came themselves to the factory to get the material and return the cards they had set. For some years I drove one of these circuit teams, and thus gained no little experience in the use and care of horses. My father also kept a kind of country store,— not for general customers, but for payment in kind of those who set the cards. There were not customers enough to justify hiring a clerk; and so different members of the Earle family acted as clerk, in due time. I was first promoted to this post when about twelve, and I well remember my feeling of pride at such exaltation. My first entry in day-book of a charge against a customer I considered as- tonishing. It will be seen that this discipline and these experiences were just what was needed to make the boy and youth acquainted with the homely details of New England life in the first quarter of the century, when a state of things existed which has long since passed away. In these drives and colloquies with the industrious Yankee farmer, his wife and children, young Pliny Earle, as Channing says of Thoreau in his endless walks and talks about Concord, came to see the inside of almost every farmer's house and head, — a sight worth seeing and a class worth knowing and spending your boyhood among. The same Concord poet has described them and their habitations as Dr. Earle saw them in the upland region around Worcester, to which he ever loved to return, until he became the last of his family there: — I love these homely mansions, and to me A farmer's house seems better than a king's. The palace boasts its art; but Liberty And honest pride and toil are splendid things. They carved this clumsy lintel, and it brings