Sunny but cold. Took Sze Pao 【蔣居仁] to Tarrytown to see Philips Castle, Sleepy Hollow, and Washington Irving’s home. The first was most interesting of all: a farm house which had to be a castle, ready at any moment to draw in and to protect tenants, slaves, and cattle, and to feed them. It is a demonstration of colonial life in the end of 17th century, when the frontier was on the Hudson.
Sze Pao has a boil on his right side, next to the ear, causing a swelling of that side of the face. Last night, I tried to phone a doctor but failed. This morning, 11 a.m., when we left for Tarrytown, we dropped in at a doctor’s office, opposite to our apartment, but a nurse there told us that the doctor would not be in until 1 p.m. We phoned to another doctor, but nobody answered. After lunch in Dobbs Ferry, we inquired at a drug store, which told us that the doctor on the 2nd floor was out, but two blocks away there was another doctor. We went there; some patients were ahead of us. When the doctor took us in, he pierced the boil, squeezed out the pus, put some medicine in, bandaged; all took 20 minutes. He asked for $10. In the U.S.A., the obtaining of medical service is by no means simple and the service is very expensive. The doctor, by talking pleasantly to us, found we were people in easy circumstances.