SERENO WATSON. 405 



not soon have learned otherwise, and school teaching is not the least 

 improving of schoolmasters. It is true I have lost time in gaining a 

 profession, and shall lose more, but I scarcely regret it." 



In the same letter he says : " I might say more of myself, my plans 

 and my opinions. Many an episode, pleasing, displeasing, and ridicu- 

 lous, miffht be inserted in the brief history upon the last two pages, 

 but I dislike to speak so much of myself. It is perhaps a fault in my 

 character, but I am rarely frank enough to confide to any one what only 

 relates to myself alone." 



Very early in his career as a teacher, he began the study of medi- 

 cine, and, after the fashion of that time, with a practitioner as a pre- 

 ceptor,, — at first with Dr. Watson of Scantic,and afterwards with Dr. 

 Sill of Windsor. Of the next year he writes : " I lived through the 

 winter of 1849-50 in New York," attending medical lectures at New 

 York University, "and left with a much diminished respect for medical 

 practitioners and professors in general, apart from medicine itself, 

 which is a noble profession." 



In 1851 he taught in Tarrytown ; in 1852 he was at home, farming 

 and studying. 



Of the next few years, his brother Louis, a physician, gives the fol- 

 lowing account : " I wrote to him to come to Quincy, Illinois, where 

 I was established, to study with me, see practice, and practise for him- 

 self, on cases that I could give him, and such as were likely to apply 

 to him. He accepted, and was preparing to leave East Windsor, when 

 his uncle, Rev. Dr. Julius A. Reed, of Davenport, Iowa, one of the 

 founders of Iowa College, and one of the Trustees, induced him to go 

 there instead, act as Tutor in the College, and teach in the Preparatory 

 School. He reached there in September, and remained as Tutor till 

 July, 1854. He then came to Quincy, studied in my office under my 

 direction, and attended urgent calls in my absence. I was city phy- 

 sician at that time, and turned over to him most of that business, and 

 gave him a small salary. He got some business in respectable fami- 

 lies of his church, and more among the poor, from whom he collected 

 but little. A physician of about seventy years fell and broke his 

 femur. Sereno attended him throughout with good success, without 

 once consulting me, and I think I knew nothing of it at the time. I 

 remember only two cases of disease which he asked me to see with 

 him, — both serious and complicated, and one of which proved fatal. 

 His practice of medicine there was entirely satisfactory to his patients 

 as far as I know. He was not legally qualified to practise, of course, 

 but he was better informed than some who were. My brother Henry, 



