Doc Shipman's Fee by Francis Hopkinson Smith

It was in the Doctor's own office that he told me this story. He has told me a dozen more, all pulled from the rag-bag of his experience, like strands of worsted from an old-fashioned reticule. Some were bright-colored, some were gray and dull -- some black; most of them, in fact, sombre in tone, for the Doctor has spent much of his life climbing up the rickety stairs of gloomy tenements. Now and then there comes out a thread of gold which he weaves into the mesh of his talk -- some gleam of pathos or heroism or unselfishness, lightening the whole fabric. This kind of story he loves best to tell.

The Doctor is not one of your new-fashioned doctors quartered in a brownstone house off the Avenue, with a butler opening the door; a pair of bob-tailed grays; a coupe with a note-book tucked away in its pocket bearing the names of various millionnaires; an office panelled in oak; a waiting-room lined with patients reading last month's magazines until he should send for them. He has no such abode nor belongings. He lives all alone by himself in an old-fashioned house on Bedford Place -- oh, Such a queer, hunched-up old house and such a quaint old neighborhood poked away behind Jefferson Market -- and he opens the door himself and sees everybody who comes -- there are not a great many of them nowadays, more's the pity.