The Croxley Master by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Mr. Robert Montgomery was seated at his desk, his head upon his hands, / in a state of the blackest despondency. Before him was the open ledger / with the long columns of Dr. Oldacre's prescriptions. At his elbow lay / the wooden tray with the labels in various partitions, the cork box, the / lumps of twisted sealing-wax, while in front a rank of bottles waited to / be filled. But his spirits were too low for work. He sat in silence / with his fine shoulders bowed and his head upon his hands.

Outside, through the grimy surgery window over a foreground of blackened / brick and slate, a line of enormous chimneys like Cyclopean pillars / upheld the lowering, dun-coloured cloud-bank. For six days in the week / they spouted smoke, but to-day the furnace fires were banked, for it was / Sunday. Sordid and polluting gloom hung over a district blighted and / blasted by the greed of man. There was nothing in the surroundings to / cheer a desponding soul, but it was more than his dismal environment / which weighed upon the medical assistant. His trouble was deeper and / more personal. The winter session was approaching. He should be back / again at the University completing the last year which would give him / his medical degree; but, alas! he had not the money with which to pay / his class fees, nor could he imagine how he could procure it. / Sixty pounds were wanted to make his career, and it might have been as / many thousand for any chance there seemed to be of his obtaining it. / He was roused from his black meditation by the entrance of Dr. Oldacre / himself, a large, clean-shaven, respectable man, with a prim manner and / an austere face. He had prospered exceedingly by the support of the / local Church interest, and the rule of his life was never by word or / action to run a risk of offending the sentiment which had made him. / His standard of respectability and of dignity was exceedingly high, and / he expected the same from his assistants. His appearance and words were / always vaguely benevolent. A sudden impulse came over the despondent / student. He would test the reality of this philanthropy.