Imagine, dear reader, looking back over the space of nearly forty years,
that you see an uncouth young man, twenty years of age, clad in the coarse
clothes and cowhide boots of an Onondaga farmer, who, straightening up
from his laborious task of potato hoeing, stops for a moment, leaning with
one hand upon his hoe, while he wipes the sweat from his handsome,
intelligent, though sun-burned brow with a cotton handkerchief in the
other. Here is a picture for a painter! Now he seems studiously observing
the old village doctor, who, seated in his crazy old gig, drawn by his
ancient sorrel mare, is leisurely jogging by on the main turnpike.
[Illustration: THE ONONDAGA FARMER BOY.]
"Good evening, Stephen; p'taters doin' well?" says the doctor.
Receiving an affirmative answer, the doctor drives past, and is gone from
the sight, but not from the memory, of the young farmer.
"And _that_ is a representative of the science of medicine!"
So saying, the young man "hoed out his row,"--which was his last,--picked
up his coat, and returned to the parental mansion, but a few rods distant.
This was the turning-point in his life.
We pass over twenty years or more.
It is operating-day at Bellevue Hospital, in New York city. A very serious
and important operation is about to be performed. Three hundred students
and physicians are seated in a semicircle under the great dome of the
hospital, in profound silence and intense interest, while the professor
and attending surgeon is delivering a brief but comprehensive lecture
relative to the forthcoming operation.
The speaker is a man of middle age, medium height, deep, expressive eyes,
well-developed brow, with that excellent quality of muscle and nerve that
is only the result of earlier out-door exercise and development, with calm
deportment and modest speech. "His conciseness of expression and quiet
self-possession are evident to every beholder, and comprehensive and
congenial to every listener."
Who is this splendid man before whom students and physicians bow in such
profound respect and veneration, and to whom even Professors Mott, Parker,
Elliott, Clark, etc., give especial attention?
It is Stephen Smith, M. D., once the Onondaga farmer boy!
Says Dr. Francis, of New York, "When a youthful farmer is seen studying
the works of learned authors during that portion of the day which is
generally set aside for relaxation and pleasing pastime, one may easily
predict for him ultimate success in the branch of life that he may choose,
provided he follows out the higher instincts of his nature. The same zeal
that caused Stephen Smith, farmer, to study at the risk of ease, and meet
the fatigue of body with the energies of mind, has ever marked his course
in after years."