"good morning, Major, Colonel, General, or Admiral," which, in spite 

 of slight exaggeration, gave one a sense of importance with which to 

 begin the day's work. Going over the hill and past the railroad tracks 

 one saw those marvelous, great horses, eight or ten at a time, which 

 pulled freight cars through the streets, but after this the glamour 

 disappeared, as one had to watch his step to avoid the sewage drains 

 which ran uncovered across the sidewalks in the famous Baltimore 

 sewage system, and there was nothing left but a long climb up to the 

 hospital, which tapered off from a very imposing front, to Dr. Welch's 

 laboratory across the street from Hanselmann's saloon, to which was 

 attributed the entire success of the early Johns Hopkins group. 



Professor Abel was at that time very comfortably settled in an old- 

 fashioned house with high-ceilinged rooms and a cupola, just off 

 Charles Street very near where St. Paul Street comes into it. Guilford 

 itself had not been developed at that time although the streets were 

 laid and a few houses started. The Professor kept a cow, for which 

 there was plenty of room, as his land ran down across the railroad 

 track and up a hill on the other side and must have covered between 

 ten and twenty acres. I had been in Baltimore for a day or so only 

 when I was asked to dine at Dr. Abel's house and went there part way 

 by trolley and the rest by bus and was most cordially greeted by Mrs. 

 Abel and the Professor. The house was to my mind an almost ideal 

 place for a professor; everything about it was livable, inside and out. 

 There was a large study on one side of the front hall, a living room 

 on the other, behind which was the dining room. In the study there 

 was an old-fashioned, marble fireplace with a coal grate and a fire 

 always burning. The walls were very high and completely lined with 

 bookshelves. The Professor's old-fashioned armchair was pulled up 

 casually before the fire, and in front of it was a footstool high enough 

 to make it possible to put one's feet on it and stretch out comfortably 

 in the chair, which the Professor used to do on less formal occasions. 

 Pulled up beside the chair was a table piled with books, periodicals, 

 and papers. The furnishings of his house, like his laboratory, were 

 ample but simple and looked as though they had been chosen for use 

 and used. I went to many evening and Sunday dinners at this house, 

 and those whom I met there were almost always workers in the lab- 

 oratory or out-of-town or foreign visitors, of whom there were many. 

 There was always so much of immediate interest going on in Dr. 

 Abel's mind in connection with his own work or that of his guests 

 that conversation usually centered about such matters. This always 

 came about most naturally and was in no way forced. 



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