The Alleyway 'Doctor'
A persistent young street peddler attempts to sell a sickly, down-and-out man an apple and some 'remedies' for his poor health, leading to a strange and chaotic confrontation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A boy stood at the mouth of the alley, with his hands in his pockets, and kindly said, 'Keep a stiff upper lip, old man.' The sick man sat on the curb, where the sun hit the walk, and leaned his head against the brick. The boy reached into his pocket, pulled out an apple, made a call to the street, and said, 'You know me, don't you?' The clerk replied, 'You're the fellow with the apples. Get out! You're shaking up all the rubbish in the alley.' 'It won't hurt,' said the clerk. 'He's sick. I know he came over for something, everything knocks his spirits opium-style. I've seen him when he couldn't speak, eat this, he'll grow better right away.' 'He's too far gone,' replied the clerk, 'yet he's lying. If you fix a way out it might help him, stop the lad. Can't let him go.' 'Eat an apple, son, it'll make you good,' persisted the boy. 'Are you never going?' yelled the clerk. He ran in a rush, and the boy did a bolt on his way to the alley, walking up to the fox and catching Tom by the back of the head. He yelled out, 'Come, burst out of that!' 'Wait, anything,' whispered Tom. 'Don't you be a musty fellow, get up and let's go to the banks and find a thousand dollar bill and have this town forever.'
“Don't you be a musty fellow, get up and let's go to the banks and find a thousand dollar bill and have this town forever.”
This vignette of street life in 1876 Seattle—complete with the 'clerk' shooing away the unhoused or sick man and the persistent peddler—feels eerily contemporary. It captures the tension between the city's commercial aspirations and the grit of the human struggles occurring in the alleys of early downtown Seattle.
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