A week had elapsed since my arrival in Bellevue. I had been introduced
to Doctor Castleton, and had exchanged a few words with him. I had also
listened to several of his street-corner talks, and my interest in him
from day to day had increased. This interest must have been reciprocal,
for he seemed to look for my coming; but then, in whom was he not
interested? I liked him for his real goodness, was entertained by his
erratic ways, and admired his intellectual brightness. Never before had
I come in contact with a mind at once so spontaneous and so versatile.
It was perhaps his most striking peculiarity, that he seemed always to
be looking for something startling to occur; and in a dearth of the new
and sensational from without, he produced excitement for the community
from within. The weather, for instance, was growing warmer, and the
summer was apparently to be a sultry one: hence, before the season was
ended we were to look for the most sweeping epidemics of disease; a
comet had been sighted by one of our comet-hunters, and we were all to
say later whether or not it would have been better if we'd never been
born, and so on, and so on. His mind teemed with a prescience of the
plans and plots of statesmen, of bureaucrats, and of "plutocrats":
Germany was going to overshadow Europe, and "grind all beneath it like a
glacier"; "France was about to strike back at Prussia, and the blow
would be felt in the trembling of the earth from Pole to Pole." Yet
this, I thought, was to the man himself all fiction--the froth on the
limpid and sparkling depths beneath--the overflow of a bright,
undisciplined mind amid the stagnation of a country town. This strange
man would not intentionally have brought actual injury upon even an
enemy--if he ever had a real enemy; he was at heart, and generally in
practice, as kind as a gentle woman. But he seemed unable to exist
without mental super-activity; and the sympathy of his fellows in his
mental gyrations was to him a constant necessity. Few of the persons
whom he habitually met and who had leisure were able to discuss with him
the books he read, and not many of them cared even to hear him talk of
his fresh literary accessions. He had, long ago, and many times,
described for the benefit of the habitués of the corners, the career of
Alexander and of Napoleon, explaining what they had done, and how they
had done it, and _why_; with instances in which the execution of their
plans had met with failure, the reasons for that failure, and the
methods by which, if _he_ had been them, success might easily have been
attained. An ancient-looking apothecary, with an old "Rebel bushwhacker"
and a painter out of work who "loafed" of evenings in, or in front of,
the corner apothecary shop, had stood gap-mouthed at these recitations
until the mine of wonders had been to the last grain exhausted. Still,
excitement must be procured for them. The doctor could better have
dispensed for a day with food for the body, than to have foregone
excitement for the mind; and if a majority of his auditors were also to
be gratified, the subject-matter must be strong and novel, must be
boldly produced, and, by preference, should be of local interest. As the
doctor himself delighted in surprises of a terrifying or horrifying
nature, it was unlikely that his inventions in that direction would be
characterized by tameness. He would not, when hard pressed on a dull
day, allow a fastidious care of even his own reputation to impede the
development of one of his surprises. If the town of Bellevue was to
stagnate mentally, it would not be the fault of George F. Castleton,
A.M., M.D.
It was on the eighth day of my stay in Bellevue, that, on starting forth
from the hotel one morning, I saw Doctor Castleton standing before the
Loomis House, in one of his favorite attitudes--that is, with his head
and shoulders thrown back and his hands upon his hips--looking intently
at a young man who stood speaking with an aged farmer across the way,
near the street curbing--a harmless-looking youth, with dark blue eyes,
and straight, very dark hair--in fact, the clerical-looking young man
whom I had seen from my windows. Something in the man's make-up--perhaps
something in his attire--suggested the stranger in town. Doctor
Castleton's large black eyes flashed irefully, and he was evidently
gratified at my approach. A complete stranger in my place might have
thought his arrival opportune, and have looked upon himself as a
diverting instrument in higher hands employed to prevent bloodshed. As I
stopped by the doctor's side, he said, with ill-suppressed agitation,
"That d----d villain over there has got to leave town. He calls himself
a doctor, but I have set in motion the wheels of the law of this great
State of Illinois, and I'll expose the infernal rascal." Then, with a
dark, knowing look at me, he hissed (though none of his preceding words
had been audible across the street), "An 'Irregular,' sir--cursed
sugar-and-water quack--a figure 9 with the tail rubbed off. Why, sir"
(in a more conversational but still emphatic tone), "_I_ have given
sixty grains of calomel at a dose, and I have given a tenth of a grain
of calomel at a dose; I would give a man a hundred grains of quinine,
and I have done it; I have" (and here he took from his pocket a small
round lozenge or button of bone) "--I have bored into the brains of
man--into the Corinthian Capital of Mortality, so to speak. When that
man" (pointing with his right forefinger to the circle of bone in his
left palm) "was kicked in the head by his mule, three of my colleagues
were on the scene before me--standing around like old women, doing
nothing. _I_ have elaborate instruments, sir--I don't read any more
books--the world's literature is here" (tapping his forehead). "I've
thought too much to care for other men's ideas. Like old women, I was
saying, sir. 'Give me a poker,' I yelled--' give me anything.' I sent
for my trephine. Great God, how the blood flew, and the bone creaked! I
raised the depressed bone. The man lives. I've done everything, in my
life. And now a cursed quack comes to town--. Where's his wife? I
say--where's his suffering children?--Don't tell me, anybody, that the
man's not married, and run away from his suffering wife. Take his trail;
glide like the wily savage back over his course, and mark me, sir,
you'll trace the pathway of a besom of destruction: weeping mothers,
broken-hearted fathers, daughters bowed in the dust. What's he here for?
Why didn't he stay where he was? But I'll drive him out of town--you
will see--bag and baggage: the wires are set--the avalanche
approaches--he is doomed."
Two days later, at the same spot, I came upon Doctor Castleton in
conversation with the harmless-looking young man, to whom the doctor
formally presented me. The name of the young man, as stated by
Castleton, and as I already knew, was "Doctor Bainbridge." We exchanged
a few words, he extended to me an invitation to call upon him, and he
accepted an urgent request from me to visit me at the hotel. As my stay
in America would probably last but a few days longer, I proposed that
the evening of that same day be selected as the time for his visit, and
to this proposal he readily assented. Then, with a quiet smile, he bowed
and left us. As he walked away Doctor Castleton remarked,
"That young man is a genius, sir. Belongs to the Corinthian Capital of
Mortality. Trust me, sir, he's the coming man in this town. He will be a
power here, in the years to come. I read a man, sir, as you would read a
book."
I then invited Doctor Castleton to come to my rooms that evening, even
if he could spare no more than a few moments; and he promised to come,
"Though," he said, "I may not be able more than to run in, and run out
again." Bainbridge, the new Bellevue candidate for medical practice,
could devote his hours as he should elect; but Castleton, "for twenty
years the guardian of the lives of thousands," must abstract, as best he
might, a few minutes from the onerous duties entailed by the exacting
wishes of his many invalid patrons.
Later in the day, I made arrangements for a little luncheon to be served
that evening in my rooms. There was something about this Bainbridge that
impelled me to know him better. I had already made up my mind that I
should like him: his were those clear blue eyes that calmly seemed to
understand the world around--truth-loving eyes. He had to my mind the
appearance of a person with large capacity for physical pleasure, yet
that of one who possessed complete control over every like and dislike
of his being. I at first took him to be extremely reticent; but later I
learned, that, when the proper chord of sympathy was touched, he
responded in perfect torrents of spoken confidence. So I that evening
sat in the larger of my rooms--my "sitting-room"--in momentary
expectation of the arrival of one or both of my invited guests.