You may believe
me or not, but the thing happened exactly as I tell it.
I had just become a medical man, but I had not started in
practice, and I lived in rooms in Gower Street. The street has
been renumbered since then, but it was in the only house which has
a bow-window, upon the left-hand side as you go down from the
Metropolitan Station. A widow named Murchison kept the house at
that time, and she had three medical students and one engineer as
lodgers. I occupied the top room, which was the cheapest, but
cheap as it was it was more than I could afford. My small
resources were dwindling away, and every week it became more
necessary that I should find something to do. Yet I was very
unwilling to go into general practice, for my tastes were all in
the direction of science, and especially of zoology, towards which
I had always a strong leaning. I had almost given the fight up and
resigned myself to being a medical drudge for life, when the
turning-point of my struggles came in a very extraordinary way.
One morning I had picked up the Standard and was glancing
over its contents. There was a complete absence of news, and I was
about to toss the paper down again, when my eyes were caught by an
advertisement at the head of the personal column.
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