Washington Square

For a man whose trade was to keep people alive, he had certainly done poorly in his own family; and a bright doctor who within three years loses his wife and his little boy should perhaps be prepared to see either his skill or his affection impugned.  Our friend, however, escaped criticism: that is, he escaped all criticism but his own, which was much the most competent and most formidable.  He walked under the weight of this very private censure for the rest of his days, and bore for ever the scars of a castigation to which the strongest hand he knew had treated him on the night that followed his wife’s death.  The world, which, as I have said, appreciated him, pitied him too much to be ironical; his misfortune made him more interesting, and even helped him to be the fashion.  It was observed that even medical families cannot escape the more insidious forms of disease, and that, after all, Dr. Sloper had lost other patients beside the two I have mentioned; which constituted an honourable precedent.  His little girl remained to him, and though she was not what he had desired, he proposed to himself to make the best of her.  He had on hand a stock of unexpended authority, by which the child, in its early years, profited largely.  She had been named, as a matter of course, after her poor mother, and even in her most diminutive babyhood the Doctor never called her anything but Catherine.  She grew up a very robust and healthy child, and her father, as he looked at her, often said to himself that, such as she was, he at least need have no fear of losing her.  I say “such as she was,” because, to tell the truth—But this is a truth of which I will defer the telling.

II