Elsie Singmaster

Ellen Levis Elsie Singmaster

On a dismal day in March, four years before Ellen Levis was born or dreamed of, the slight acquaintance of Stephen Lanfair and Edward Levis was quickened by an unpleasant incident into friendship. Both attended the University Medical School in Philadelphia and both were ambitious, but there the resemblance between them ended. Stephen, an underclassman, the only son of a physician, had been started early and well in his career, and was the youngest student; Levis, a Senior, had fended for himself and was almost the oldest. Stephen had an allowance which was not large, but which sufficed for all necessities and some luxuries; Levis had only that which he earned by tutoring, and by acting as substitute instructor, laboratory assistant, and editor of the Students' Quarterly. Their acquaintance began when Stephen, wishing to win a place on the editorial board of the Quarterly, and conferring with Levis, had been invited by him to become a contributor to the next issue. On the morning of that dismal March day Stephen sat, far from Philadelphia, in the room which had been his father's office in Chestnut Ridge, a coal-mining town above Wilkes-Barre, waiting until it was time for the train which should take him back to the Medical School which he had left to attend his father in his last illness.