Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1890 — A Battle with Fortune. [ARTICLE]

A Battle with Fortune.

When I was a young man, said the Doctor, with a wife and two children dependent upon me for support, I Eassed through some very dark days. [y practice was small and for the most part non-paying, and at the close of an unusually severe winter I found myself one day literally penniless. I was tramping about the streets, debat* ing whether I had better not drop into the river and end the struggle, when the cry of an old knife-grinder caught my ear. He was bent, decrepit and weather-beaten, and went pushing before him a grindstone on wheels, stop- . ping now and then to utter his monotonous cry. I asked him if he would kindly answer a few questions as to his business. He eyed me for a moment curiously, then consented. A series of inquiries elicited the fact that hio earnings wtore between two and three dollars a day. An idea floated through my brain. I asked the old fellow if hisj trade were easily learned, and if he would take me with him for a few days. l He consented for the sake of company, he said. At the end of three days he offered to sell me his grindstone and route, as he was tired of tramping. My need was great, and I gladly closed with the offer. A bargain was struok,. the man demanded to be paid in weekly installments, and I went to work at once. At first the cry affected my throat a little, but I soon got over that, and when in December I gave up the business I had accumulated nearly seven hundred and fifty dollars, besides supporting my family comfortably. I haven’t had a happier summer my whole long life than that summer, tramping the streets with a grindstone. But when the cold weather set in I had to abandon the route, because I could not work with gloves on, and my fingers became so numb without that I ruined more scissors than I improved. So I opened an office in a fashionable quarter, was fortunate to make a happy hit* and became famous; but years of success have not sufficed to erase tho recollection of that terrible winter or of the happy and contented summer of knife-gnnding that succeeded it. And that is the secret of that old grindstone you see in the corner,” said the Doetor, pointing to a battered old stone on wheels that seeemed strangely out of place amid the elegance that surrounded it. “But for your life you must not mention my name in connection with the old relic; it would ruin my praotice in a day.” ;