After Mr. and Mrs. Hale died, the farm passed to a sister, Mrs. Wrenn, and when her husband, too, died—he had been a slack man, with no hold on anything—she made the fatal mistake, too common among old people on the farms, of making over the property to a kinsman (in this case, a married step-niece and her husband) on condition of support. I never knew Mrs. Wrenn, but a young farmer’s wife, a friend of mine, was anxious about her troubles, and through her there came to our notice an incident which seemed to light up the whole gray region of the farm.
The neighbors began to hear rumors of neglect and abuse. Mrs. Wrenn was never seen, and those who knew the skinflint ways of her entertainers suspected trouble and presently confided their fears to the young doctor of the neighborhood. He came at once, and found the poor soul in a fatal illness, left alone in unspeakable dirt and squalor in a sort of out-house, with unwashed bed-clothes, no one to feed or tend her, and food which she could not touch put roughly beside her once a day. There were signs too of actual rough handling.
“Don’t try to make me live!” the old lady whispered, with command and entreaty. “Don’t ye dare to keep me living,” and he assured her solemnly that he would not, except in reason, and would only make her more comfortable. He rated the bad woman in charge till he had her well frightened, and then, though it was not only dark already, but raining fast (and though he was poor himself, with his way to make and no financial backing) he drove five miles to town and brought back and installed a nurse at his own expense.
“The tears were running down his cheeks,” the nurse herself told me, “when he assured that poor old creature that either he or I would be with her day and night, that we would never leave her, and she would be safe with us. He paid my charges, and all supplies and food, out of his own pocket. He saw her every day, and when her release came, he was close beside her, and had her hand in his. He couldn’t have been more tender to his own mother. And he gave that bad woman a part of what she deserved.”
I should like to say something more of this young physician. He started as a farm boy, with no capital beyond insight and purpose, and skilled hands, and was led to his career, or rather could not keep himself from his career, because of the fire of pity and tenderness that possessed him. He has come to honor and recognition now, but at the time of which I write, and for years, he was known only to a thirty-mile circle of farm people, a good part of them too poor to pay for any services. He gave himself to them, without knowing that he was giving anything. He was a born citizen, too, served as overseer of the poor, and as selectman, and people consulted him about their quarrels and troubles.