Texas Surgeon: an Autobiography Page: 30
xii, 180 p. ; 21 cm.View a full description of this book.
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was the Ames Building on narrow Washington Street, put up
by the owners of the Ames Plow Company, whose picks and
shovels exercised the backs of the millions engaged in the task
of building America. This twelve-story structure was the talk of
the town. It was one of the last tall buildings to be built entirely
of stone of upward diminishing thickness, rather than by the
skyscraper method of curtain walls hung to a steel frame. It was
with trepidation and a quickened step that I walked by the Ames
Building, with its massive stone projections and carved orna-
ment. Supposing they fell! Appalling, with so many pedestrians
below. But the friezework of the Ames Building did not fall and
remains intact, so I believe, to this much later day.
On winding Washington Street into which the sun, in the
darker months, occasionally penetrated with interesting shafts of
light, I was also drawn and fascinated by the activities of News-
paper Row. The Globe, the Daily Advertiser, and, of course, the
Transcript at the corner of Milk Street, always had a crowd in
front of their offices, overflowing into the street, as it read the
latest bulletins written in chalk on a blackboard in a script so
elegant that I was moved to admire. In the basements of these
beehive structures, by bending low, I could see and hear the
presses, then driven by steam.
Coached by Aunt Lavinia I went looking for work into the
North End, the West End, and even to the South End. But my
strong accent, a Canadian mixture of English, Scottish, and Irish,
was a great handicap. At first I could neither make myself prop-
erly understood nor follow what was being said to me. It seemed
to me that Bostonians did not speak English at all, but some out-
landish dialect. Then, too, I was very young and overeager. I
was determined to work, and get an education. This idea burned
within my brain, and nothing could quench it. Twice my poten-
tial had been affirmed, by Dr. Blackwell and Dr. McKinnon.
The confusions of the city could not alter that.
Presently I did find work, possibly through the intervention
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Atkinson, Donald Taylor. Texas Surgeon: an Autobiography, book, 1958; New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth143566/m1/42/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas Health Science Center Libraries.