o many people
pay the doctor.

When any one is sick, the doctor is sent for, and the family are all
impatient until he arrives. If the case is a bad one, he is looked
upon as a ministering angel; the patient's eye brightens when he
comes, and all in the house feel more cheerful for hours after. Amid
all kinds of weather, at all hours in the day or night, he obeys the
summons, and brings all his skill, acquired by long study, and by
much laborious practice, to bear upon the disease. But when the sick
person gets well, the doctor is forgotten; and when the bill
appears, complaint at its amount is almost always made; and too
frequently, unless he proceed to legal measures, it is entirely
withheld from him. These things ought not so to be. Of course, there
are many honourable exceptions; but every physician can
exclaim--"Would that their number was greater!"

THE LITTLE BOUND-BOY.

IN a miserable old house, in Commerce street, north of Pratt street
Baltimore,--there are fine stores there now--lived a shoemaker,
whose wife took a particular fancy to me as a doctor, (I never felt
much flattered by the preference,) and would send for me whenever
she was sick. I could do no less than attend her ladyship. For a
time I tried, by pretty heavy bills, to get rid of the honour; but
it wouldn't do. Old Maxwell, the husband, grumbled terribly, but
managed to keep out of my debt. He was the reputed master of his
house; but I saw enough to satisfy me that if he were master, his
wife was mistress of the master.

Maxwell had three or four apprentices, out of whom he managed to get
a good deal of work at a small cost. Among these was a little
fellow, whose peculiarly delicate appearance often attracted my
attention. He seemed out of place among the stout, vulgar-looking
boys, who stitched and hammered away from morning until night in
their master's dirty shop.

"Where did you get that child?" I asked of the shoemaker one day.

"Whom do you mean? Bill?"

"Yes, the little fellow you call Bill."

"I took him out of pure charity. His mother died about a year and a
half ago, and if I hadn't taken him in, he would have gone to the
poor house as like as not."

"Who was his mother?"

"She was a poor woman, who sewed for the slopshops for a living--but
their pay won't keep soul and body together."

"And so she died?"

"Yes, she died, and I took her child out of pure charity, as I have
said."

"Is he bound to you?"

"Oh