f his once remarked to me
years later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of the
sweetest recollections of my life is to picture old Dr. Gridley, Ed
Boulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, Congressman
Barr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel over
there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which
Boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Pierceton
bus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force
and volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around.
And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese
will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. It was delicious."

One of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred,
was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one would
think, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. During his life,
his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as I
learned after, to comment on this, but to no result. He could not be
made to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew that
the people were poor.

"Once he became angry at my uncle," his daughter once told me, "because
he offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patients
for their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with a
local physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to charge
and collect."

This generosity on his part frequently led to some very interesting
results. On one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on his
front lawn in Warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree and
his legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife," a poorly dressed
farmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began to
explain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor's
advice. He seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped his
brow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gently
accented "uh-huh, uh-huh," until the story was all told and the advice
ready to be received. When this was given in a low, reassuring tone, he
took from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out a
prescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. The
latter took out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turned
it idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in his
pocket for a mate to it