CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
ready to start it and there were fires every day. Around the corner, not a square away from us, was the house of the Empire Hook and Ladder Company. When a fire occurred the State House bell with the strokes one, two, three and four, for the points of the compass, with their combinations, told the direction, and frantic men in their stiff hats and red shirts shouted as they ran out the long ladders and hurried away.
In the fall of 1854 my father bought a four-story brick house on the north side of Chestnut Street, the second door west of Eighteenth Street, and there began practice as well as attending to the duties of the college. The house which cost him about ten thousand dollars has since sold for a hundred thousand dollars, thus justifying his financial judgment, although, as often happens, the crop was not gathered by him who sowed the seed. He furnished it handsomely and fitted up an office in the front basement. He was popular in Philadelphia as he had been at home. He went to the Wistar parties of the day and gave parties at his home to the students, professors and others. He was one of the founders of the Philadelphia City Institute, which has since grown to great importance, and its president, and likewise of the Howard Hospital. A publisher named Wilson made an engraving of him which he sold to the public. Root, the most skilful daguerreotypist of the time, made several daguerreotypes and had two portraits made in crayon, one of which he retained to exhibit in his store. On the opposite side of the street, in a large double brownstone house, lived Robert Truitt, then very wealthy, but the house has since passed into the ownership of McCreary, the coal man, father of George D. McCreary, member of Congress Next door, also in a brownstone house, lived the Balls, and they had the steps ornamented with two large carved stone balls. Both families were among his patients. S. Henry Norris, a hopeful young lawyer, recently married, lived opposite, on very friendly
