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one level to another on very short notice and while remaining precisely the same individual. And in the other direction, it was obvious that moves were in the making. As I've already mentioned, a Mr. Reimers, letter carrier, bought the old place across from the Laphams, tore it down, and built a very attractive two-family flat, one of which he occupied and the other, rented to the Kingsburys -- and thus a letter carrier was suddenly living among the affluent. It was okay but it was a surprise to see it happen the first time. This perhaps satisfied a long-held ambition of his and was a reward for frugality over the years. And the Seiters built on DeWitt although not of the local gentry, and the three Seiter children began to move among the local crowd. And the Swartz family built a nice home on Highland Avenue and moved into the crowd. And I suppose some may have looked upon the Craton entrance into the neighborhood in the same way. Another thing that gradually dawned on me was the fact that James Street Hill wasn't the only nice section of town and it was possible for people to live elsewhere and still be socially acceptable. But the most impressive lesson regarding the social ladder was yet to be driven home to me, a double move, one down, one up, and it came when my father died suddenly, the family income dropped overnight from $10-12,000 a year, a very good income in those days before income taxes and the inflation we've gone through since, to maybe $1,500 a year, the income from my father's estate. Mother and I sold our home to a VanBergen family, and we moved into a flat on Douglas Street, three blocks distant but definitely in the borderland.

The other two events, which I've already mentioned, and which made me realize that life isn't without tragedy, were the Selkirk drowning and the death of the Lees' Airedale in Rock Creek Park in Washington. And yet, until my father's death, I never really believed that such things as these could ever actually happen to ME.

The event which most profoundly affected my life at this time was, of course, my father's death. He was in the habit of making house calls in the evening as well as stopping in at a hospital or so if he had patients in them who required attention. It all occurred in February 1915. My father had contracted a cold but he refused to go to bed with it and simply kept on with his practice for much too long before finally giving in. When he did go to bed at last after being out one very cold, stormy night, he'd waited too long and developed pneumonia. I remember that he was in bed in the guest room. I don't remember much about his illness, nor do I believe that I had the faintest idea how ill he actually was. The part that I can remember was the last hour or two of his life. Cousin Nellie Barker had come in to be with Mother that day. I'd been around the house all day and late in the afternoon, two doctors came to the

Transcription Notes:
Corrected many typos. ?