Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/232

 were embittered by the loss of his son, who was killed in a duel with one Miller of Quincy, the result of a quarrel over “an elegant female.”

Dr. Joseph Hunt of Concord, class of 1770, was selected as mate to Dr. Foster. He remained in the service, apparently, for the first season only, and then returned to the practice he was just building up at Dracut. There he sustained the character of “an upright man in all his dealings, exceedingly close and exact, small in stature, and not gifted by nature with any extraordinary abilities, but anxious to improve such as he had.” Unfortunately this anxiety led him a little too far: he was discovered robbing a grave to obtain a subject for dissection; his professional career was nipped in the bud, and he was forced to leave town. He went home to Concord, and, being a notable penman, kept the village school for a few years. He then opened an apothecary’s shop, which he must have managed quite in the modern manner, for it yielded him “a genteel support” for the rest of his life, and a handsome competence to his widow.