Then came a famous Berlin doctor to the dying American.  He studied the case attentively, for it was strange enough to arouse and enlist all a doctor’s keen scientific interest.  When analyzed, copper had been found in the hemorrhage, with no apparent reason for it, and the Paris doctors were puzzling over the cause.  “Were you in the war?” asked the great man.  “Were you shot?”

“Yes.”

“Shot in the shoulder?”

Then came back to Colonel Conwell, the recollection of the duel with the Confederate around a tree in the North Carolina woods and the shot that had lodged in his shoulder near his neck and was never removed.

“That is the trouble,” said the physician.  “The bullet has worked down into the lung and only the most skillful operation can save you, and only one man can do it”—­and that man was a surgeon in Bellevue Hospital, New York.

Carefully was the sinking man taken on board a steamer.  Only the most rugged constitution could have stood that trip in the already weakened condition of his system.  But those early childhood days in the Berkshire Hills had put iron into his blood, the tonic of sunshine and fresh air into his very bone and muscle.  Safely he made the journey, though no one knew all he suffered in those terrible days of weakness and pain on the lone, friendless trip across the Atlantic.  Safely he went through the operation.  The bullet was removed, and with health mending, he made his way to Boston where his loving young wife awaited him.

But out of these experiences, suffering, alone, friendless, poor, in a strange city, grew after all the Samaritan Hospital of Philadelphia that opens wide its doors, first and always, to the suffering sick poor.

CHAPTER XIII

WRITING HIS WAY AROUND THE WORLD

Days of Poverty in Boston.  Sent to Southern Battlefields.  Around the World for New York and Boston Papers.  In a Gambling Den In Hong Kong, China.  Cholera and Shipwreck.

Abject poverty awaited him on his return to Boston.  The fire in St. Paul had left them but little property, while their enforced hurried departure compelled that little to be sold at a loss.  This money was now entirely gone, and once more he faced the world in absolute poverty.  He rented a single room in the East district of Boston and furnished it with the barest necessities.  Colonel Conwell secured a position on “The Evening Traveller” at five dollars a week, and Mrs. Conwell cheerily took in sewing.  Thus they made their first brave stand against the gaunt wolf at the door.  Here their first child was born, a daughter, Nima, now Mrs. E.G.  Tuttle, of Philadelphia.  These were dark days for the little household.  Night after night the father came home to see the one he loved best in all the world, suffering for the barest necessities of life, yet cheerful, buoyant, never complaining.  So sensitive to the sufferings of