I had been attending a case of puerperal fever, a patient of Dr. Wyeth’s--the Doctor having been suddenly called out of town shortly after the confinement. For two weeks or more it was an anxious time for me. The patient was in a serious condition; she belonged to an influential family; friends and relatives were solicitous, some officious. On my first visit I had found the condition disturbing, and it grew rapidly more so. Pressure was brought to bear on the husband to dismiss “that girl doctor” and employ someone more experienced. My professional skin was painfully thin in those days--it seemed such a crime to be young. I felt such comments keenly, and though I could not have blamed the husband had he yielded to the requests of the friends, he did not. The case pulled through and was a real triumph for me, and later some who had sneered at “the girl doctor” came to her for treatment. But it was a strenuous time, and I was worn and anxious; and in the evening, on returning to the office, it was a great consolation to talk over the case with Dr. Randolph, and listen to his helpful suggestions, or his emphasis of the encouraging symptoms. On that eventful night in March, though my patient had then passed the danger-point, I was in that overwrought state where I could bear to talk or think only of her. Recognizing this, Dr. Randolph discussed the case with me briefly, congratulating me on the patient’s assured safety, then said firmly: “Now we will dismiss this from our minds. You are going to rest while I read something to you that will make you forget Mrs. Leighton and her pulse and temperature; so lie down and be quiet.” I obeyed. Seating himself in a big chair beside me, he opened a little olive-green volume and read to me an essay called “Strawberries.” Jaded, anxious, and overwrought as I was, the crispness and freshness of that essay came to me as the most welcome and delicious restorative I have ever known. I forgot my cares, forgot the blustering March outside, I was transported to summer and sunshine, bobolink music, and the joy of life in heaping measure. My very soul was steeped in summer. I sniffed the clover-scented air of those high upland meadows where wild strawberries grew. I stooped low, parting the grass and daisies, gathering the fragrant berries, while the breath of June meadows came up in my face, and the light and warmth of June skies enveloped me. The essay finished, Dr. Randolph wrote on the fly-leaf of the book my name and the date, and gave it to me. It was “Locusts and Wild Honey”--the first book of John Burroughs’s that I ever owned, or knew. Were there nothing else to be grateful to the Doctor for, the bestowal of that book, and of all that it later brought into my life, would make me forever deeply his debtor.