n the
table. Her smile changed to an expression of astonishment when she saw
the two gentlemen. Mrs. Schmidt introduced Frederick as a famous German
physician.

"I just spoiled my stomach a little," the woman, who was pretty and well
dressed, said in excuse for the trouble she was giving. "My husband will
laugh at me and scold me if he hears I ran to a doctor."

Frederick and Peter confirmed Mrs. Schmidt's diagnosis, and Mrs. Schmidt
told the candidate for the grave, who was so gay and unsuspecting, that
she might have to undergo a slight operation. She inquired kindly for her
husband and her child, who had come into the world three months before
with her help, and the woman gave ready answers in the best of spirits.
Peter took it upon himself to acquaint her husband the very same day with
her condition.

During the next week, Peter drew his friend more and more into his
practice. Frederick found a certain grim attraction in it. It was a
strange treadmill, set in a world of everlasting suffering and dying,
in a subterranean stratum of life, having nothing in common with that
deceptive existence of a comparatively happy superficiality which he had
been able to lead in New York. The Schmidts were doing hard service
requiring the utmost self-renunciation. They received no greater
compensation than enabled them to obtain sufficient food, clothing and
shelter to be able to continue in that service. Though Peter Schmidt was
not a Socialist, his practice was almost exclusively confined to the
working class. Most of the two doctors' clients were poor immigrants
with large families, who toiled laboriously in the Britannia-metal
factories to keep the wolf from the door. Their fees were extremely low,
and in half the cases Peter, true to his views of life, did not collect
them.

The section of the city in which their office was located was dismal
beyond parallel. A factory with its offices took up a whole block. Though
Frederick was well acquainted with the corrosive sublimate and carbolic
acid smell of consultation rooms, he nevertheless had difficulty in
concealing the depressing effect the Schmidts' home had upon him. It was
dark and gloomy, and the street noises came in directly from the windows.
In Germany, a city of thirty thousand inhabitants is dead. This American
city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants raced and rushed, rang bells,
rattled and clattered and raved like mad. Nobody had a moment's time.
Everybody hurri