Mrs. Morton was a handsome young woman, with a fair face and elegant
figure. It would have been difficult to find a better looking couple
anywhere in the suburbs, and with good health and strength it seemed as
if fortune would certainly smile on them. Doctor Morton built a summer
cottage at Wellesley, where the public library now stands, and planted a
grove of trees about it; but a mere earthly paradise could not satisfy
him. He was not an ambitious man, or he would not have chosen the dental
profession; but the food he lived on was not of this world. He had the
daring spirit, the speculative temperament, and restless energy of the
born discoverer. Already he had made improvements in the manufacture of
artificial teeth. He was the first, or one of the first, to recognize the
importance of chemistry in connection with the practice of medicine. He
had no sooner returned to Boston than he commenced the study of chemistry
with Dr. Charles T. Jackson, spending from six to ten hours a week in his
laboratory; and he thus became acquainted with the properties and
peculiarities of most of the chemical ingredients known at that time.
Mrs. Morton soon discovered with awe and trepidation that she had married
no ordinary man. That he had a real skeleton in his closet was to have
been expected; but, besides this, there were rows of mysterious-looking
bottles, with substances in them quite different from the medicines which
were prescribed by the doctors in Farmington.
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