of pleasantry, and reached for one of the treasures, but folded it in
his hand without looking at it and seemed to be lost in meditation.
The surgeon concluded that he had had enough exercise and laid himself
down on the wide sofa at the end of the room, from whence he could
watch his companion's face. He clasped his hands under his head and
looked eager and interested. He had grown to have something of the
appearance of a foreigner, as people often do who have spent much time
in eastern countries. The two friends were silent for some minutes,
until an impatient voice roused Dr. Leslie from his reflections.
"It always makes me covet my neighbor's wits when I see you!"
announced the wanderer. "If I settled myself into a respectable
practice I should be obliged to march with the army of doctors who
carry a great array of small weapons, and who find out what is the
matter with their patients after all sorts of experiment and
painstaking analysis, and comparing the results of their thermometers
and microscopes with scientific books of reference. After I have done
all that, you know, if I have had good luck I shall come to exactly
what you can say before you have been with a sick man five minutes.
You have the true gift for doctoring, you need no medical dictator,
and whatever you study and whatever comes to you in the way of
instruction simply ministers to your intuition. It grows to be a
wonderful second-sight in such a man as you. I don't believe you
investigate a case and treat it as a botanist does a strange flower,
once a month. You know without telling yourself what the matter is,
and what the special difference is, and the relative dangers of this
case and one apparently just like it across the street, and you could
do this before you were out of the hospitals. I remember you!" and
after a few vigorous puffs of smoke he went on; "It is all very well
for the rest of the men to be proud of their book learning, but they
don't even try to follow nature, as Sydenham did, who followed no man.
I believe such study takes one to more theory and scientific digest
rather than to more skill. It is all very well to know how to draw
maps when one gets lost on a dark night, or even to begin with
astronomical calculations and come down to a chemical analysis of the
mud you stand in, but hang me if I wouldn't rather have the instinct
of a dog who can go straight home across a bit of strange country. A
man has no right to be a doctor if he doesn't simply make everything
bend to his work of getting sick people well, and of trying to remedy
the failures of strength that come from misuse or inheritance or
ignorance. The anatomists and the pathologists have their place, but
we must look to the living to learn the laws of life, not to the dead.
A wreck shows you where the reef is, perhaps, but not how to manage a
ship in the offing. The men who make it their business to write the
books and the men who make it their business to follow them aren't the
ones for successful practice."
Dr. Leslie smiled, and looked over his shoulder at his beloved library
shelves, as if he wished to assure the useful volumes of his continued
affection and respect, and said quietly, as if to beg the displeased
surgeon's patience with his brethren: "They go on, poor fellows,
studying the symptoms and never taking it in that the life power is at
fault. I see more and more plainly that we ought to strengthen and
balance the whole system, and aid nature to make the sick man well
again. It is nature that does it after all, and diseases are oftener
effects of illness than causes. But the young practitioners must
follow the text-books a while until they have had enough experience to
open their eyes to observe and have learned to think for themselves. I
don't know which is worse; too much routine or no study at all. I was
trying the other day to count up the different treatments of pneumonia
that have been in fashion in our day; there must be seven or eight,
and I am only afraid the next thing will be a sort of skepticism and
contempt of remedies. Dr. Johnson said long ago that physicians were a
class of men who put bodies of which they knew little into bodies of
which they knew less, but certainly this isn't the fault of the
medicines altogether; you and I know well enough they are often most
stupidly used. If we blindly follow the medical dictators, as you call
them, and spend our treatment on the effects instead of the causes,
what success can we expect? We do want more suggestions from the men
at work, but I suppose this is the same with every business. The
practical medical men are the juries who settle all the theories of
the hour, as they meet emergencies day after day."
"The men who have the true gift for their work," said Dr. Ferris
impatiently. "I hadn't the conscience to go on myself, that's why I
resigned, you know. I can talk about it, but I am not a good workman.
But if there are going to be doctors in the next world, I wish I might
be lucky enough to be equal to such a heavenly business. You thought I
didn't care enough about the profession to go on, but it wasn't so. Do
push your little girl ahead if she has the real fitness. I suppose it
is a part of your endowment that you can distinguish the capacities
and tendencies of health as well as illness; and there's one thing
certain, the world cannot afford to do without the workmen who are
masters of their business by divine right."
Dr. Leslie was looking at the jade-stone gods. "I suppose the poor
fellows who chipped out these treasures of yours may have thought they
were really putting a visible piece of Heaven within their neighbors'
reach," he said. "We can't get used to the fact that whatever truly
belongs to the next world is not visible in this, and that there is
idol-making and worshiping forever going on. When we let ourselves
forget to educate our faith and our spiritual intellects, and lose
sight of our relation and dependence upon the highest informing
strength, we are trying to move our machinery by some inferior motive
power. We worship our tools and beg success of them instead of
remembering that we are all apprentices to the great Master of our own
and every man's craft. It is the great ideas of our work that we need,
and the laws of its truths. We shall be more intelligent by and by
about making the best of ourselves; our possibilities are infinitely
beyond what most people even dream. Spiritual laziness and physical
laziness together keep us just this side of sound sleep most of the
time. Perhaps you think it is a proper season for one at least?"
"Dear me, no!" said Dr. Ferris, who was evidently quite wide awake.
"Do you remember how well Buckle says that the feminine intellect is
the higher, and that the great geniuses of the world have possessed
it? The gift of intuition reaches directly towards the truth, and it
is only reasoning by deduction that can take flight into the upper air
of life and certainty. You remember what he says about that?"
"Yes," said Dr. Leslie. "Yes, it isn't a thing one easily forgets. But
I have long believed that the powers of Christ were but the higher
powers of our common humanity. We recognize them dimly now and then,
but few of us dare to say so yet. The world moves very slowly, doesn't
it? If Christ were perfect man, He could hardly tell us to follow Him
and be like Him, and yet know all the while that it was quite
impossible, because a difference in his gifts made his character an
unapproachable one to ours. We don't amount to anything, simply
because we won't understand that we must receive the strength of
Heaven into our souls; that it depends upon our degree of receptivity,
and our using the added power that comes in that way; not in our
taking our few tools, and our self-esteem and satisfaction with
ourselves, and doing our little tricks like dancing dogs; proud
because the other dogs can do one less than we, or only bark and walk
about on their four legs. It is our souls that make our bodies worth
anything, and the life of the soul doesn't come from its activity, or
any performance of its own. Those things are only the results and the
signs of life, not the causes of it."
"Christ in us, the hope of glory," said the other doctor gravely, "and
Christ's glory was his usefulness and gift for helping others; I
believe there's less quackery in our profession than any other, but it
is amazing how we bungle at it. I wonder how you will get on with your
little girl? If people didn't have theories of life of their own, or
wouldn't go exactly the wrong way, it would be easier to offer
assistance; but where one person takes a right direction of his own
accord, there are twenty who wander to and fro."
"I may as well confess to you," he continued presently, "that I have
had a _protégé_ myself, but I don't look for much future joy in
watching the development of my plots. He has taken affairs into his
own hands, and I dare say it is much better for him, for if I had
caught him young enough, I should have wished him to run the gauntlet
of all the professions, not to speak of the arts and sciences. He was
a clever young fellow; I saw him married the day before I left
England. His wife was the daughter of a curate, and he the younger son
of a younger son, and it was a love affair worth two or three
story-books. It came to be a question of money alone. I had known the
boy the year before in Bombay and chanced to find him one day in the
Marine Hospital at Nagasaki. We had been up into the interior
together. He was recommended to me as a sort of secretary and
assistant and knew more than I did about most things. When he caught
sight of me he cried like a baby, and I sat down and heard what the
trouble was, for I had let him go off with somebody who could give him
a good salary,--a government man of position, and I thought poor Bob
would be put in the way of something better. Dear me, the climate was
killing him before my eyes, and I took passage for both of us on the
next day's steamer. When I got him home I turned my bank account into
a cheque and tucked it into his pocket, and told him to marry his wife
and settle down and be respectable and forget such a wandering old
fellow as I."
The listener made a little sound of mingled admiration and disgust.
"So you're the same piece of improvidence as ever! I wonder if you
worked your passage over to Boston, or came as a stowaway? Well, I'm
glad to give you house-room, and, to tell the truth, I was wondering
how I should get on to-morrow without somebody to help me in a piece
of surgery. My neighbors are not very skillful, but they're good men
every one of them, unless it's old Jackson, who knows no more about
the practice of medicine than a turtle knows about the nearest fixed
star. Ferris! I don't wonder at your giving away the last cent you had
in the world, I only wonder that you had a cent to give. I hope the
young man was grateful, that's all, only I'm not sure I like his
taking it."
"He thought I had enough more, I dare say. He said so much I couldn't
stand his nonsense. He'll use it better than I could," said the guest
briefly. "As I said, I couldn't bring him up; in the first place I
haven't the patience, and beside, it wouldn't be just to him. But you
must let me know how you get on with your project; I shall make you a
day's visit once in six months."
"That'll be good luck," responded the cheerful host. "Now that I am
growing old I find I wish for company oftener; just the right man, you
know, to come in for an hour or two late in the evening to have a
cigar, and not say a word if he doesn't feel like it."
The two friends were very comfortable together; the successive cigars
burnt themselves out slowly, and the light of the great lamp was
bright in the room. Here and there a tinge of red shone out on the
backs of the books that stood close together in the high cases. There
was an old engraving or two, and in one corner a solemn bronze figure
of Dante, thin and angular, as if he had risen from his coffin to take
a last look at this world. Marilla had often spoken of him
disrespectfully, and had suggested many other ornaments which might be
brought to take his place, but the doctor had never acted upon her
suggestions. From the corner of one book-case there hung a huge wasp's
nest, and over the mantel-shelf, which was only wide enough for some
cigar boxes and a little clock and a few vials of medicines, was a
rack where three or four riding whips and a curious silver bit and
some long-stemmed pipes found unmolested quarters; and in one corner
were some walking sticks and a fishing rod or two which had a very
ancient unused look. There was a portrait of Dr. Leslie's grandfather
opposite the fire-place; a good-humored looking old gentleman who had
been the most famous of the Oldfields ministers. The study-table was
wide and long, but it was well covered with a miscellaneous array of
its owner's smaller possessions, and the quick-eyed visitor smiled as
he caught sight of Nan's new copy of Miss Edgeworth's "Parent's
Assistant" lying open and face downward on the top of an instrument
case.
Marilla did not hear the doctor and his guest tramp up to bed until
very late at night, and though she had tried to keep awake she had
been obliged to take a nap first and then wake up again to get the
benefit of such an aggravating occasion. "I'm not going to fret myself
trying to make one of my baked omelets in the morning," she assured
herself, "they'll keep breakfast waiting three quarters of an hour,
and it would fall flat sure's the world, and the doctor's got to ride
to all p'ints of the compass to-morrow, too."
X
ACROSS THE STREET
It would be difficult to say why the village of Oldfields should have
been placed in the least attractive part of the township, if one were
not somewhat familiar with the law of growth of country communities.
The first settlers, being pious kindred of the Pilgrims, were mindful
of the necessity of a meeting-house, and the place for it was chosen
with reference to the convenience of most of the worshipers. Then the
parson was given a parsonage and a tract of glebe land somewhere in
the vicinity of his pulpit, and since this was the centre of social
attraction, the blacksmith built his shop at the nearest cross-road.
And when some enterprising citizen became possessed of an idea that
there were traders enough toiling to and fro on the rough highways to
the nearest larger village to make it worth his while to be an
interceptor, the first step was taken toward a local centre of
commerce, and the village was fairly begun. It had not yet reached a
remarkable size, though there was a time-honored joke because an
enthusiastic old woman had said once, when four or five houses and a
new meeting-house were being built all in one summer, that she
expected now that she might live to see Oldfields a seaport town.
There had been a great excitement over the second meeting-house, to
which the conservative faction had strongly objected, but, after the
radicals had once gained the day, other innovations passed without
public challenge. The old First Parish Church was very white and held
aloft an imposing steeple, and strangers were always commiserated if
they had to leave town without the opportunity of seeing its front by
moonlight. Behind this, and beyond a green which had been the
playground of many generations of boys and girls, was a long row of
horse-sheds, where the farmers' horses enjoyed such part of their
Sunday rest as was permitted them after bringing heavy loads of rural
parishioners to their public devotions. The Sunday church-going was by
no means so carefully observed in these days as in former ones, when
disinclination was anything but a received excuse. In Parson
Leslie's--the doctor's grandfather's--day, it would have condemned a
man or woman to the well-merited reproof of their acquaintances. And
indeed most parishioners felt deprived of a great pleasure when, after
a week of separation from society, of a routine of prosaic farm-work,
they were prevented from seeing their friends parade into church, from
hearing the psalm-singing and the sermon, and listening to the news
afterward. It was like going to mass and going to the theatre and the
opera, and making a round of short calls, and having an outing in
one's own best clothes to see other people's, all rolled into one;
beside which, there was (and is) a superstitious expectation of good
luck in the coming week if the religious obligations were carefully
fulfilled. So many of the old ideas of the efficacy of ecclesiasticism
still linger, most of them by no means unlawfully. The elder people of
New England are as glad to have their clergyman visit them in their
last days as if he granted them absolution and extreme unction. The
old traditions survive in our instincts, although our present opinions
have long since ticketed many thoughts and desires and customs as out
of date and quite exploded.
We go so far in our vigorous observance of the first commandment, and
our fear of worshiping strange gods, that sometimes we are in danger
of forgetting that we must worship God himself. And worship is
something different from a certain sort of constant church-going, or
from even trying to be conformers and to keep our own laws and our
neighbors'.
Because an old-fashioned town like Oldfields grows so slowly and with
such extreme deliberation, is the very reason it seems to have such a
delightful completeness when it has entered fairly upon its maturity.
It is possessed of kindred virtues to a winter pear, which may be
unattractive during its preparatory stages, but which takes time to
gather from the ground and from the air a pleasant and rewarding
individuality and sweetness. The towns which are built in a hurry can
be left in a hurry without a bit of regret, and if it is the fate or
fortune of the elder villages to find themselves the foundation upon
which modern manufacturing communities rear their thinly built houses
and workshops, and their quickly disintegrating communities of people,
the weaknesses of these are more glaring and hopeless in the contrast.
The hurry to make money and do much work, and the ambition to do good
work, war with each other, but, as Longfellow has said, the lie is the
hurrying second-hand of the clock, and the truth the slower hand that
waits and marks the hour. The New England that built itself houses a
hundred years ago was far less oppressed by competition and by other
questions with which the enormous increase of population is worrying
its younger citizens. And the overgrown Oldfields that increase now,
street by street, were built then a single steady sound-timbered house
at a time, and all the neighbors watched them rise, and knew where the
planks were sawn, and where the chimney bricks were burnt.
In these days when Anna Prince was young and had lately come to live
in the doctor's square house, with the three peaked windows in the
roof, and the tall box borders and lilac bushes in its neat front
yard, Oldfields was just beginning to wake from a fifty years'
architectural sleep, and rub its eyes, and see what was thought about
a smart little house with a sharp gabled roof, and much scalloping of
its edges, which a new store-keeper had seen fit to build. There was
one long street which had plenty of room on either side for most of
the houses, and where it divided, each side of the First Parish
Church, it became the East road and the West road, and the rest of the
dwellings strayed off somewhat undecidedly toward the world beyond.
There were a good many poplars in the front yards, though their former
proud ranks were broken in many places, so that surviving veterans
stood on guard irregularly before the houses, where usually one or two
members of the once busy households were also left alone. Many of the
people who lived in the village had outlying land and were farmers of
it, but beside the doctor's there were some other households which the
land supported indirectly, either through professions or because some
kind ancestor had laid by enough money for his children and
grandchildren. The ministers were both excellent men; but Dr. Leslie
was the only man who looked far ahead or saw much or cared much for
true success. In Titian's great Venetian picture of the Presentation
of the Virgin, while the little maiden goes soberly up the steps of
the temple, in the busy crowd beneath only one man is possessed by the
thought that something wonderful is happening, and lifts his head,
forgetting the buyers and sellers and gossipers, as his eyes follow
the sacred sight. Life goes on everywhere like that fragment of it in
the picture, but while the man who knows more than his fellows can be
found in every company, and sees the light which beckons him on to the
higher meanings and better gifts, his place in society is not always
such a comfortable and honored one as Dr. Leslie's. What his friends
were apt to call his notions were not of such aggressive nature that
he was accused of outlawry, and he was apt to speak his mind
uncontradicted and undisturbed. He cared little for the friction and
attrition, indeed for the inspiration, which one is sure to have who
lives among many people, and which are so dear and so helpful to most
of us who fall into ruts if we are too much alone. He loved his
friends and his books, though he understood both as few scholars can,
and he cared little for social pleasure, though Oldfields was, like
all places of its size and dignity, an epitome of the world. One or
two people of each class and rank are as good as fifty, and, to use
the saying of the doctor's friend, old Captain Finch: "Human nature is
the same the world over."
Through the long years of his solitary life, and his busy days as a
country practitioner, he had become less and less inclined to take
much part in what feeble efforts the rest of the townspeople made to
entertain themselves. He was more apt to loiter along the street,
stopping here and there to talk with his neighbors at their gates or
their front-yard gardening, and not infrequently asked some one who
stood in need of such friendliness to take a drive with him out into
the country. Nobody was grieved at remembering that he was a
repository of many secrets; he was a friend who could be trusted
always, though he was one who had been by no means slow to anger or
unwilling at times to administer rebuke.
One Sunday afternoon, late in November, while the first snow-storm of
the year was beginning, Dr. Leslie threw down a stout French medical
work of high renown as if it had failed to fulfil its mission of being
instructive first and interesting afterward. He rose from his chair
and stood looking at the insulted volume as if he had a mind to
apologize and try again, but kept his hands behind him after all. It
was thinly dressed in fluttering paper covers, and was so thick and so
lightly bound that it had a tendency to divide its material substance
into parts, like the seventhlies and eighthlies of an old-fashioned
sermon. "Those fellows must be in league with the book-binders over
here," grumbled the doctor. "I must send word to that man in New York
to have some sort of cover put on these things before they come down."
Then he lifted the book again and poised it on one hand, looking at
its irregular edges, and reflecting at length that it would be in much
better condition if he had not given it a careless crushing in the
corner of his carriage the day before. It had been sunshiny, pleasant
weather, and he had taken Nan for a long drive in the Saturday
half-holiday. He had decided, before starting, that she should manage
the reins and he would think over one or two matters and read a
while; it had been a great convenience lately that Nan understood the
responsibility of a horse and carriage. He was finding her a more and
more useful little companion. However, his studies and reflections had
been postponed until some other time, for Nan had been very eager to
talk about some of her lessons in which it seemed his duty to take an
interest. The child seemed stronger and better that autumn than he had
ever known her, and her mind had suddenly fastened itself upon certain
of her studies. She seemed very quick and very accurate, the doctor
thought, and the two traits do not always associate themselves.
He left the table and walked quickly to the west window, and, clasping
his hands behind him, stood looking out into the front yard and the
street beyond. The ground was already white and he gave a little sigh,
for winter weather is rarely a source of happiness to a doctor,
although this member of the profession was not made altogether
sorrowful by it. He sometimes keenly enjoyed a hard tramp of a mile or
two when the roads were so blocked and the snow so blinding that he
left his horse in some sheltering barn on his way to an impatient
sufferer.