Despite the neighborhood’s friendliness, however, we struggled, not only with poverty and disease, but with the traditional fate of the pioneer: in many cases we encountered the inevitable opposition which the unusual must arouse. It seems almost ungracious to relate some of our first experiences with doctors. No one can give greater tribute than do the nurses of the settlement to the generosity of physicians and surgeons when we recall how often paying patients were set aside for more urgent non-paying ones; the counsel freely given from the highest for the lowliest; the eager readiness to respond. Occasionally sage advice came from a veteran who knew the people well and lamented the economic pressure which at times involved, to their spiritual disaster, doctors as well as patients. [Illustration] The first day on which we set out to discover the sick who might need a nurse, my comrade found a woman with high temperature in an airless room, more oppressive because of the fetid odor from the bed. Service with one of New York’s skilled specialists had trained the nurse well and she identified the symptoms immediately. “Yes, there was a Lodge doctor.—He had left a prescription.—He might come again.” With fine diplomacy an excuse was made to call upon the doctor and to assume that he would accept the nurse’s aid. My colleague presented her credentials and offered to accompany him to the case immediately, as she was “sure conditions must have changed since his last visit or he would doubtless have ordered” so-and-so,—suggesting the treatment the distinguished specialists were then using. He promised to go, and the nurse waited patiently for hours at the woman’s bedside. When he arrived he pooh-poohed and said, “Nothing doing.” We had ascertained the financial condition of the family from the evidence of the empty push-cart and the fact that the fish-peddler was not in the market with his merchandise. Five dollars was loaned that night to purchase stock next day. My comrade and I decided to visit the patient early the next morning, to mingle judgments on what action could be taken in this serious illness with due respect to established etiquette. When we arrived, the Lodge doctor and a “Professor” (a consultant) were in the sickroom, and our five dollars, left for fish, was in their possession. Cigarettes in mouths and hats on heads, they were questioning husband and wife, and only Dickens could have done justice to the scene. We were not too timid to allude to the poverty and the source of the fee, and felt free when we were told to “go ahead and do anything you like.” That permission we acted upon instantly and received, over the telephone, authority from the distinguished specialist to get to work. We were prudent enough to report the authority and treatment given, with solemn etiquette, to the physician in attendance, who in turn congratulated us on having helped him to save a life!