One evening she took me with her to a confinement case on which she and a senior student were engaged. It was my first experience in dispensary quarters, and the sordid surroundings, the mean tenements, the poverty and misery were a revelation to me. Everything was untidy and unclean. I could not bear even to sit on the chairs. The night was long; the groans of the woman were painful to hear. Being only a junior, with no knowledge of obstetrics, I had little intelligent interest in the case. I gathered from the low conferences of the students, after their frequent examinations, that all was not progressing satisfactorily; and some time after midnight they told me they would need to call in the professor in obstetrics, since it promised to be a case for instrumental interference. Undergraduates were not allowed to assume charge of such cases unaided. The senior student and I went for the professor. I had never been on the street at so late an hour, and felt a pleasurable excitement in the adventure. I dreaded most those mean streets through which we had to go before reaching the more respectable quarters. We had gone only a short way when our progress was arrested by a night-prowler, though no more formidable one than a goat. On nearing Boylston Street we met a few men and saw an occasional policeman. Everyone we passed showed more or less curiosity, and one policeman halted near us, but said nothing, Miss Farnsworth’s obstetric bag perhaps indicating to him and others that we were out on some legitimate errand. Presently my heart almost stopped: A man stepping alongside Miss Farnsworth had caught step and was walking by her side without a word. Glancing up at her in apprehension, I saw her face was pale and stern, but she looked straight ahead, apparently oblivious of his presence. Soon I felt her crowding me, and saw he was pushing close to her side; but she neither slackened her pace nor betrayed awareness of him. My heart was going like a trip-hammer, but somehow I felt secure, she seemed so unmoved. Soon the man ceased crowding, lifted his hat, and in a deferential tone said, “I beg your pardon, ladies,” and walked on. We walked on, too, not speaking till he had disappeared from sight; then the imperturbable young woman, with trembling voice, told me she had heard that that was the best way to treat such an encounter, but that it was the first time she had had to test the advice. Professor S---- went back with us and delivered the child. I heard Lowell lecture two or three times that first year--conversational talks and readings from the early English dramatists. I liked his scholarly face and voice, and felt the charm of his manner, but recall almost nothing of his talks. In reading he pronounced ocean “o-ce-an.”