with red oil paint in a rude rolling press which I had constructed. The first graver I used was the back spring of a pocket knife ground to a point. An obliging blacksmith afterwards made some tools for me and I began to work in type metal.
   I engraved some small ships and sold them at the newspaper offices. Other little jobs followed and I produced some spare cash. As there was but one other person working in the same line I began to feel of some consequence.
   At length it was determined that I should become a physician, and at fourteen years of age, I left my workshop in the garret and entered with Dr. Joseph Young, a man whose goodness of heart and amiable manners I shall never forget. He had been a surgeon in the Revolutionary army and had that talent of observation which is sometimes deficient in men of greater celebrity, and was very successful in his practice. The study of physic in those days was compounded all the medicines; delivered them to the patients and sometimes administered them.
   No small share o fatigue attended this as our business was extensive. 
   I continued this mode of life for five years, reading all the medical books within reach, and yet

found time for engraving for letter press and some on copper, the products of which partly clothed me and paid for four courses of all the medical lectures, besides Natural Philosophy and a smattering of French at evening school. One of my earliest employers was William Durell who began with toy books and proceeded to larger works such as a folio edition of Josephus and above a hundred volumes of British Classics. It was while engraving for him that I met with Bewick’s works, and having with difficulty procured some box wood, found the advantage of that material over type metal.
   Before I was of age I underwent an examination according to law and received a license to practice physic. My wayward fate induced me to refuse the offer of a partnership with my old teacher Dr. Young. In 1795, I was employed by the Health Committee as Resident Physician at Bellevue Hospital where I passed three months among yellow fever patients (most of them sent up in the last stage of disease) and witnessed above a hundred deaths. Although I was employed day and night and even assisted in opening four dead bodies, I escaped the infection, but suffered from depression of spirits.
  In 1796, I graduated in Columbia College as M.D., became a married man, hired a house and