One day, passing up Washington Street, Boston, I detected a familiar voice
issuing from a store, on the window-panes of which lately vacated premises
was pasted "Removal," and, looking in, I saw a man mounted on a box
selling a pinchbeck watch. The place _looked_ a deal like a New York
Peter-Funk shop. However that may have been, I recognized the hired
auctioneer as once having been a medical practitioner. He was a graduate
of C---- Medical College. Owing to his honesty and lack of acquisitiveness
among dishonest and niggardly creatures in ----, whom he faithfully served
in his earlier efforts at his profession, he was compelled to resort to
other means of gaining a support for himself and family, and finally was
reduced to clerking and selling goods for those whose business tact
exceeded his own.
[Illustration: THE PETER-FUNK PHYSICIAN.]