magazine, I left--really was forced out--which raised a little feeling
on my part; not on his, I am sure, for I was very difficult to deal
with.
Time passed and I heard nothing. I had been able to succeed in a
somewhat different realm, that of the magazine contributor, and although
I thought a great deal of my brother I paid very little attention to him
or his affairs, being much more concerned with my own. One spring night,
however, the following year, as I was lying in my bed trying to sleep, I
heard a quartette of boys in the distance approaching along the street
in which I had my room. I could not make out the words at first but the
melody at once attracted my attention. It was plaintive and compelling.
I listened, attracted, satisfied that it was some new popular success
that had "caught on." As they drew near my window I heard the words "On
the Banks of the Wabash" most mellifluously harmonized.
I jumped up. They were my words! It was Paul's song! He had another
"hit" then--"On the Banks of the Wabash," and they were singing it in
the streets already! I leaned out of the window and listened as they
approached and passed on, their arms about each other's shoulders, the
whole song being sung in the still street, as it were, for my benefit.
The night was so warm, delicious. A full moon was overhead. I was young,
lonely, wistful. It brought back so much of my already spent youth that
I was ready to cry--for joy principally. In three more months it was
everywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played by
orchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. One day on Broadway
near the Marlborough I met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, a
smart summer suit, a gay straw hat.
"Ah," I said, rather sarcastically, for I still felt peeved that he had
shown so little interest in my affairs at the time I was leaving. "On
the banks, I see."
"On the banks," he replied cordially. "You turned the trick for me,
Thee, that time. What are you doing now? Why don't you ever come and see
me? I'm still your brother, you know. A part of that is really yours."
"Cut that!" I replied most savagely. "I couldn't write a song like that
in a million years. You know I couldn't. The words are nothing."
"Oh, all right. It's true, though, you know. Where do you keep yourself?
Why don't you come and see me? Why be down on me? I live here, you
know." He looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel.
"Well, maybe I will some time," I said distantly, but with no particular
desire to mend matters, and we parted.
There was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one so
characteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one of
the really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it here
and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in
connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had
suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic
breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or
condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope
had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do
nothing mentally that was worth while. At the same time I had all but
retired from the world, living on less and less until finally I had
descended into those depths where I was in the grip of actual want, with
no place to which my pride would let me turn. I had always been too vain
and self-centered. Apparently there was but one door, and I was very
close to it. To match my purse I had retired to a still sorrier
neighborhood in B----, one of the poorest. I desired most of all to be
let alone, to be to myself. Still I could not be, for occasionally I
met people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to various
publishing houses. One day as I was walking in some street near Broadway
(not on it) in New York, I ran into my brother quite by accident, he as
prosperous and comfortable as ever. I think I resented him more than
ever. He was of course astonished, shocked, as I could plainly see, by
my appearance and desire not to be seen. He demanded to know where I was
living, wanted me to come then and there and stay with him, wanted me to
tell him what the trouble was--all of which I rather stubbornly refused
to do and finally got away--not however without giving him my address,
though with the caution that I wanted nothing.
The next morning he was there bright and early in a cab. He was the most
vehement, the most tender, the most disturbed creature I have ever seen.
He was like a distrait mother with a sick child more than anything else.
"For God's sake," he commented when he saw me, "living in a place like
this--and at this number, too!" (130 it was, and he was superstitious as
to the thirteen.) "I knew there'd be a damned thirteen in it!" he
ejaculated. "And me over in New York! Jesus Christ! And you sick and run
down this way! I might have known. It's just like you. I haven't heard a
thing about you in I don't know when. Well, I'm not going back without
you, that's all. You've got to come with me now, see? Get your clothes,
that's all. The cabby'll take your trunk. I know just the place for you,
and you're going there tomorrow or next day or next week, but you're
coming with me now. My God, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself,
and me feeling the way I do about you!" His eyes all but brimmed.
I was so morose and despondent that, grateful as I felt, I could
scarcely take his mood at its value. I resented it, resented myself, my
state, life.
"I can't," I said finally, or so I thought. "I won't. I don't need your
help. You don't owe me anything. You've done enough already."
"Owe, hell!" he retorted. "Who's talking about 'owe'? And you my
brother--my own flesh and blood! Why, Thee, for that matter, I owe you
half of 'On the Banks,' and you know it. You can't go on living like
this. You're sick and discouraged. You can't fool me. Why, Thee, you're
a big man. You've just got to come out of this! Damn it--don't you
see--don't make me"--and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his
eyes. "You can't help yourself now, but you can later, don't you see?
Come on. Get your things. I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. You've
got to come, that's all. I won't go without you," and he began looking
about for my bag and trunk.
I still protested weakly, but in vain. His affection was so overwhelming
and tender that it made me weak. I allowed him to help me get my things
together. Then he paid the bill, a small one, and on the way to the
hotel insisted on forcing a roll of bills on me, all that he had with
him. I was compelled at once, that same day or the next, to indulge in a
suit, hat, shoes, underwear, all that I needed. A bedroom adjoining his
suite at the hotel was taken, and for two days I lived there, later
accompanying him in his car to a famous sanitarium in Westchester, one
in charge of an old friend of his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose fame
for this sort of work was great. Here I was booked for six weeks, all
expenses paid, until I should "be on my feet again," as he expressed it.
Then he left, only to visit and revisit me until I returned to the city,
fairly well restored in nerves if not in health.
But could one ever forget the mingled sadness and fervor of his original
appeal, the actual distress written in his face, the unlimited generosity
of his mood and deed as well as his unmerited self-denunciation? One
pictures such tenderness and concern as existing between parents and
children, but rarely between brothers. Here he was evincing the same
thing, as soft as love itself, and he a man of years and some affairs
and I an irritable, distrait and peevish soul.
Take note, ye men of satire and spleen. All men are not selfish or hard.
The final phase of course related to his untimely end. He was not quite
fifty-five when he died, and with a slightly more rugged quality of mind
he might have lasted to seventy. It was due really to the failure of his
firm (internal dissensions and rivalries, in no way due to him, however,
as I have been told) and what he foolishly deemed to be the end of his
financial and social glory. His was one of those simple, confiding,
non-hardy dispositions, warm and colorful but intensely sensitive,
easily and even fatally chilled by the icy blasts of human difficulty,
however slight. You have no doubt seen some animals, cats, dogs, birds,
of an especially affectionate nature, which when translated to a strange
or unfriendly climate soon droop and die. They have no spiritual
resources wherewith to contemplate what they do not understand or know.
Now his friends would leave him. Now that bright world of which he had
been a part would know him no more. It was pathetic, really. He emanated
a kind of fear. Depression and even despair seemed to hang about him
like a cloak. He could not shake it off. And yet, literally, in his case
there was nothing to fear, if he had only known.
And yet two years before he did die, I knew he would. Fantastic as it
may seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemed
himself an essential figure was all but unendurable. He had no ready
money now--not the same amount anyhow. He could not greet his old-time
friends so gayly, entertain so freely. Meeting him on Broadway shortly
after the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going into
business for himself as a publisher, but I realized that he could not.
He had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. He
was not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never been
anything but that. He tried in this new situation to write songs, but he
could not. They were too morbid. What he needed was some one to buoy him
up, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would have
taken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. As it was he had no
one. His friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed.
Personally, I was in no position to do anything at the time, being more
or less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties which
had held me for a number of years.
About a year or so after he failed my sister E---- announced that Paul
had been there and that he was coming to live with her. He could not pay
so much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kind
and another, but neither did he have to. Her memory was not short; she
gave him the fullness of her home. A few months later he was ostensibly
connected with another publishing house, but by then he was feeling so
poorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinking
and the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caresses
to offer. A little later I met a doctor who said, "Paul cannot live. He
has pernicious anæmia. He is breaking down inside and doesn't know it.
He can't last long. He's too depressed." I knew it was so and what the
remedy was--money and success once more, the petty pettings and flattery
of that little world of which he had been a part but which now was no
more for him. Of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings and
companionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as I could make
out, found him in that retired world to which he was forced. One or two
pegged-out actors sought him and borrowed a little of the little that he
had; a few others came when he had nothing at all. His partners,
quarreling among themselves and feeling that they had done him an
injustice, remained religiously away. He found, as he often told my
sister, broken horse-shoes (a "bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another
"bad sign," was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen--and
all these little straws depressed him horribly. Finally, being no longer
strong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days at
a time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up. For a little while
he would go "downtown" to see this, that and the other person, but would
soon return. One day on coming back home he found one of his hats lying
on his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and according
to my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified by
the sight of it. To him it was the death-sign. Some one had told him so
not long before!!!
Then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always held
us, he wanted to see me every day. He had a desire to talk to me about
his early life, the romance of it--maybe I could write a story some
time, tell something about him! (Best of brothers, here it is, a thin
little flower to lay at your feet!) To please him I made notes, although
I knew most of it. On these occasions he was always his old self, full
of ridiculous stories, quips and slight _mots_, all in his old and best
vein. He would soon be himself, he now insisted.
Then one evening in late November, before I had time to call upon him
(I lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from E----. He had
suddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in the
head. When I arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands folded
over his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, that
indescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth--the
empty shell of the beetle. There were tears, a band of reporters from
the papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a host
of friends and flowers, flowers, flowers. It is amazing what
satisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms--broken
columns and gates ajar!
Being ostensibly a Catholic, a Catholic sister-in-law and other
relatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at the
church of one of his favorite rectors. All Broadway was there, more
flowers, his latest song read from the altar. Then there was a carriage
procession to a distant Catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, the
rector of the church, officiating at the grave. It was so cold and
dreary there, horrible. Later on he was removed to Chicago.
But still I think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space,
but on Broadway between Twenty-ninth and Forty-second Streets, the
spring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of the
hotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, his
own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his
songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their
hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn.
Ah, Broadway! Broadway! And you, my good brother! Here is the story that
you wanted me to write, this little testimony to your memory, a pale,
pale symbol of all I think and feel. Where are the thousand yarns I have
laughed over, the music, the lights, the song?
Peace, peace. So shall it soon be with all of us. It was a dream. It is.
I am. You are. And shall we grieve over or hark back to dreams?
_The County Doctor_
How well I remember him--the tall, grave, slightly bent figure, the head
like Plato's or that of Diogenes, the mild, kindly, brown-gray eyes
peering, all too kindly, into the faces of dishonest men. In addition,
he wore long, full, brown-gray whiskers, a long gray overcoat (soiled
and patched toward the last) in winter, a soft black hat that hung
darkeningly over his eyes. But what a doctor! And how simple and often
non-drug-storey were so many of his remedies!
"My son, your father is very sick. Now, I'll tell you what you can do
for me. You go out here along the Cheevertown road about a mile or two
and ask any farmer this side of the creek to let you have a good big
handful of peach sprigs--about so many, see? Say that Doctor Gridley
said he was to give them to you for him. Then, Mrs. ----, when he brings
them, you take a few, not more than seven or eight, and break them up
and steep them in hot water until you have an amber-colored tea. Give
Mr. ---- about three or four tea-spoonfuls of that every three or four
hours, and I hope we'll find he'll do better. This kidney case is
severe, I know, but he'll come around all right."
And he did. My father had been very ill with gall stones, so weak at
last that we thought he was sure to die. The house was so somber at the
time. Over it hung an atmosphere of depression and fear, with pity for
the sufferer, and groans of distress on his part. And then there were
the solemn visits of the doctor, made pleasant by his wise, kindly humor
and his hopeful predictions and ending in this seemingly mild
prescription, which resulted, in this case, in a cure. He was seemingly
so remote at times, in reality so near, and wholly thoughtful.
On this occasion I went out along the long, cold, country road of a
March evening. I was full of thoughts of his importance as a doctor. He
seemed so necessary to us, as he did to everybody. I knew nothing about
medicine, or how lives were saved, but I felt sure that he did and that
he would save my father in spite of his always conservative,
speculative, doubtful manner. What a wonderful man he must be to know
all these things--that peach sprouts, for instance, were an antidote to
the agony of gall stones!
As I walked along, the simplicity of country life and its needs and
deprivations were impressed upon me, even though I was so young. So few
here could afford to pay for expensive prescriptions--ourselves
especially--and Dr. Gridley knew that and took it into consideration, so
rarely did he order anything from a drug-store. Most often, what he
prescribed he took out of a case, compounded, as it were, in our
presence.
A brisk wind had fluttered snow in the morning, and now the ground was
white, with a sinking red sun shining across it, a sense of spring in
the air. Being unknown to these farmers, I wondered if any one of them
would really cut me a double handful of fresh young peach sprigs or
suckers from their young trees, as the doctor had said. Did they really
know him? Some one along the road--a home-driving farmer--told me of an
old Mr. Mills who had a five-acre orchard farther on. In a little while
I came to his door and was confronted by a thin, gaunt, bespectacled
woman, who called back to a man inside:
"Henry, here's a little boy says Dr. Gridley said you were to cut him a
double handful of peach sprigs."
Henry now came forward--a tall, bony farmer in high boots and an old
wool-lined leather coat, and a cap of wool.
"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he?" he observed, eyeing me most critically.
"Yes, sir."
"What's the matter? What does he want with 'em? Do ya know?"
"Yes, sir. My father's sick with kidney trouble, and Dr. Gridley said I
was to come out here."
"Oh, all right. Wait'll I git my big knife," and back he went, returning
later with a large horn-handled knife, which he opened. He preceded me
out through the barn lot and into the orchard beyond.
"Dr. Gridley sent cha, did he, huh?" he asked as he went. "Well, I guess
we all have ter comply with whatever the doctor orders. We're all apt
ter git sick now an' ag'in," and talking trivialities of a like
character, he cut me an armful, saying: "I might as well give ya too
many as too few. Peach sprigs! Now, I never heered o' them bein' good
fer anythin', but I reckon the doctor knows what he's talkin' about. He
usually does--or that's what we think around here, anyhow."
In the dusk I trudged home with my armful, my fingers cold. The next
morning, the tea having been brewed and taken, my father was better. In
a week or two he was up and around, as well as ever, and during this
time he commented on the efficacy of this tea, which was something new
to him, a strange remedy, and which caused the whole incident to be
impressed upon my mind. The doctor had told him that at any time in the
future if he was so troubled and could get fresh young peach sprigs for
a tea, he would find that it would help him. And the drug expense was
exactly nothing.
In later years I came to know him better--this thoughtful, crusty,
kindly soul, always so ready to come at all hours when his cases
permitted, so anxious to see that his patients were not taxed beyond
their financial resources.
I remember once, one of my sisters being very ill, so ill that we were
beginning to fear death, one and another of us had to take turn sitting
up with her at night to help and to give her her medicine regularly.
During one of the nights when I was sitting up, dozing, reading and
listening to the wind in the pines outside, she seemed persistently to
get worse. Her fever rose, and she complained of such aches and pains
that finally I had to go and call my mother. A consultation with her
finally resulted in my being sent for Dr. Gridley--no telephones in
those days--to tell him, although she hesitated so to do, how sister was
and ask him if he would not come.
I was only fourteen. The street along which I had to go was quite dark,
the town lights being put out at two a.m., for reasons of thrift
perhaps. There was a high wind that cried in the trees. My shoes on the
board walks, here and there, sounded like the thuds of a giant. I recall
progressing in a shivery ghost-like sort of way, expecting at any step
to encounter goblins of the most approved form, until finally the
well-known outlines of the house of the doctor on the main
street--yellow, many-roomed, a wide porch in front--came, because of a
very small lamp in a very large glass case to one side of the door, into
view.
Here I knocked, and then knocked more. No reply. I then made a still
more forceful effort. Finally, through one of the red glass panels which
graced either side of the door I saw the lengthy figure of the doctor,
arrayed in a long white nightshirt, and carrying a small glass
hand-lamp, come into view at the head of the stairs. His feet were in
gray flannel slippers, and his whiskers stuck out most grotesquely.
"Wait! Wait!" I heard him call. "I'll be there! I'm coming! Don't make
such a fuss! It seems as though I never get a real good night's rest any
more."
He came on, opened the door, and looked out.
"Well," he demanded, a little fussily for him, "what's the matter now?"
"Doctor," I began, and proceeded to explain all my sister's aches and
pains, winding up by saying that my mother said "wouldn't he please come
at once?"
"Your mother!" he grumbled. "What can I do if I do come down? Not a
thing. Feel her pulse and tell her she's all right! That's every bit I
can do. Your mother knows that as well as I do. That disease has to run
its course." He looked at me as though I were to blame, then added,
"Calling me up this way at three in the morning!"
"But she's in such pain, Doctor," I complained.
"All right--everybody has to have a little pain! You can't be sick
without it."
"I know," I replied disconsolately, believing sincerely that my sister
might die, "but she's in such awful pain, Doctor."
"Well, go on," he replied, turning up the light. "I know it's all
foolishness, but I'll come. You go back and tell your mother that I'll
be there in a little bit, but it's all nonsense, nonsense. She isn't a
bit sicker than I am right this minute, not a bit--" and he closed the
door and went upstairs.
To me this seemed just the least bit harsh for the doctor, although, as
I reasoned afterwards, he was probably half-asleep and tired--dragged
out of his bed, possibly, once or twice before in the same night. As I
returned home I felt even more fearful, for once, as I was passing a
woodshed which I could not see, a rooster suddenly flapped his wings and
crowed--a sound which caused me to leap all of nineteen feet Fahrenheit,
sidewise. Then, as I walked along a fence which later by day I saw had
a comfortable resting board on top, two lambent golden eyes surveyed me
out of inky darkness! Great Hamlet's father, how my heart sank! Once
more I leaped to the cloddy roadway and seizing a cobblestone or hunk of
mud hurled it with all my might, and quite involuntarily. Then I ran
until I fell into a crossing ditch. It was an amazing--almost a
tragic--experience, then.
In due time the doctor came--and I never quite forgave him for not
making me wait and go back with him. He was too sleepy, though, I am
sure. The seizure was apparently nothing which could not have waited
until morning. However, he left some new cure, possibly clear water in a
bottle, and left again. But the night trials of doctors and their
patients, especially in the country, was fixed in my mind then.
One of the next interesting impressions I gained of the doctor was that
of seeing him hobbling about our town on crutches, his medicine case
held in one hand along with a crutch, visiting his patients, when he
himself appeared to be so ill as to require medical attention. He was
suffering from some severe form of rheumatism at the time, but this,
apparently, was not sufficient to keep him from those who in his
judgment probably needed his services more than he did his rest.
One of the truly interesting things about Dr. Gridley, as I early began
to note, was his profound indifference to what might be called his
material welfare. Why, I have often asked myself, should a man of so
much genuine ability choose to ignore the gauds and plaudits and
pleasures of the gayer, smarter world outside, in which he might readily
have shone, to thus devote himself and all his talents to a simple rural
community? That he was an extremely able physician there was not the
slightest doubt. Other physicians from other towns about, and even so
far away as Chicago, were repeatedly calling him into consultation. That
he knew life--much of it--as only a priest or a doctor of true wisdom
can know it, was evident from many incidents, of which I subsequently
learned, and yet here he was, hidden away in this simple rural world,
surrounded probably by his Rabelais, his Burton, his Frazer, and his
Montaigne, and dreaming what dreams--thinking what thoughts?
"Say," an old patient, friend and neighbor of his once remarked to me
years later, when we had both moved to another city, "one of the
sweetest recollections of my life is to picture old Dr. Gridley, Ed
Boulder who used to run the hotel over at Sleichertown, Congressman
Barr, and Judge Morgan, sitting out in front of Boulder's hotel over
there of a summer's evening and haw-hawing over the funny stories which
Boulder was always telling while they were waiting for the Pierceton
bus. Dr. Gridley's laugh, so soft to begin with, but growing in force
and volume until it was a jolly shout. And the green fields all around.
And Mrs. Calder's drove of geese over the way honking, too, as geese
will whenever people begin to talk or laugh. It was delicious."
One of the most significant traits of his character, as may be inferred,
was his absolute indifference to actual money, the very cash, one would
think, with which he needed to buy his own supplies. During his life,
his wife, who was a thrifty, hard-working woman, used frequently, as I
learned after, to comment on this, but to no result. He could not be
made to charge where he did not need to, nor collect where he knew that
the people were poor.
"Once he became angry at my uncle," his daughter once told me, "because
he offered to collect for him for three per cent, dunning his patients
for their debts, and another time he dissolved a partnership with a
local physician who insisted that he ought to be more careful to charge
and collect."
This generosity on his part frequently led to some very interesting
results. On one occasion, for instance, when he was sitting out on his
front lawn in Warsaw, smoking, his chair tilted back against a tree and
his legs crossed in the fashion known as "jack-knife," a poorly dressed
farmer without a coat came up and after saluting the doctor began to
explain that his wife was sick and that he had come to get the doctor's
advice. He seemed quite disturbed, and every now and then wiped his
brow, while the doctor listened with an occasional question or gently
accented "uh-huh, uh-huh," until the story was all told and the advice
ready to be received. When this was given in a low, reassuring tone, he
took from his pocket his little book of blanks and wrote out a
prescription, which he gave to the man and began talking again. The
latter took out a silver dollar and handed it to the doctor, who turned
it idly between his fingers for a few seconds, then searched in his
pocket for a mate to it, and playing with them a while as he talked,
finally handed back the dollar to the farmer.
"You take that," he said pleasantly, "and go down to the drug-store and
have the prescription filled. I think your wife will be all right."
When he had gone the doctor sat there a long time, meditatively puffing
the smoke from his cob pipe, and turning his own dollar in his hand.
After a time he looked up at his daughter, who was present, and said:
"I was just thinking what a short time it took me to write that
prescription, and what a long time it took him to earn that dollar. I
guess he needs the dollar more than I do."
In the same spirit of this generosity he was once sitting in his yard of
a summer day, sunning himself and smoking, a favorite pleasure of his,
when two men rode up to his gate from opposite directions and
simultaneously hailed him. He arose and went out to meet them. His wife,
who was sewing just inside the hall as she usually was when her husband
was outside, leaned forward in her chair to see through the door, and
took note of who they were. Both were men in whose families the doctor
had practiced for years. One was a prosperous farmer who always paid his
"doctor's bills," and the other was a miller, a "ne'er-do-well," with a
delicate wife and a family of sickly children, who never asked for a
statement and never had one sent him, and who only occasionally and at
great intervals handed the doctor a dollar in payment for his many
services. Both men talked to him a little while and then rode away,
after which he returned to the house, calling to Enoch, his old negro
servant, to bring his horse, and then went into his study to prepare his
medicine case. Mrs. Gridley, who was naturally interested in his
financial welfare, and who at times had to plead with him not to let his
generosity stand wholly in the way of his judgment, inquired of him as
he came out:
"Now, Doctor, which of those two men are you going with?"
"Why, Miss Susan," he replied--a favorite manner of addressing his wife,
of whom he was very fond--the note of apology in his voice showing that
he knew very well what she was thinking about, "I'm going with W----."
"I don't think that is right," she replied with mild emphasis. "Mr.
N---- is as good a friend of yours as W----, and he always pays you."
"Now, Miss Susan," he returned coaxingly, "N---- can go to Pierceton and
get Doctor Bodine, and W---- can't get any one but me. You surely
wouldn't have him left without any one?"
What the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is related
that there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county who
had not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited by
the kindly wisdom of this Samaritan. He was nearly everybody's doctor,
in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise. Everywhere he
went, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly being
called into service by some one--the well-to-do as well as by those who
had nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the same
degree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor--a
humanness possibly--which detained and fascinated him and made him a
little more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else.
"He was always doing it," said his daughter, "and my mother used to
worry over it. She declared that of all things earthly, papa loved an
unfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care."
In illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude toward
the very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this:
In our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparatively
rich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himself
during the Civil War. He was a figure, and very much looked up to by
all. People were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him.
A remote, stern soul, yet to Dr. Gridley he was little more than a child
or schoolboy--one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave. Plainly,
the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were very
much in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the one
to provide it. At any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, and
in a public place--at the principal street corner, for instance, or in
the postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate--it was
not at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quite
frail now, to task for not taking better care of himself--coming out,
for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chilly
weather, and in other ways misbehaving himself.
"There you go again!" I once heard him call to the colonel, as the
latter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was no
rural free delivery in those days) "--walking around without your
rubbers, and no overcoat! You want to get me up in the night again, do
you?"
"It didn't seem so damp when I started out, Doctor."
"And of course it was too much trouble to go back! You wouldn't feel
that way if you couldn't come out at all, perhaps!"
"I'll put 'em on! I'll put 'em on! Only, please don't fuss, Doctor. I'll
go back to the house and put 'em on."
The doctor merely stared after him quizzically, like an old
schoolmaster, as the rather stately colonel marched off to his home.
Another of his patients was an old Mr. Pegram, a large, kind,
big-hearted man, who was very fond of the doctor, but who had an
exceedingly irascible temper. He was the victim of some obscure malady
which medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. This seemed to
increase his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor had
at last discovered that if he could get Mr. Pegram angry enough the
malady would occasionally disappear. This seemed at times as good a
remedy as any, and in consequence he was occasionally inclined to try
it.
Among other things, this old gentleman was the possessor of a handsome
buffalo robe, which, according to a story that long went the rounds
locally, he once promised to leave to the doctor when he died. At the
same time all reference to death both pained and irritated him
greatly--a fact which the doctor knew. Finding the old gentleman in a
most complaining and hopeless mood one night, not to be dealt with,
indeed, in any reasoning way, the doctor returned to his home, and early
the next day, without any other word, sent old Enoch, his negro
servant, around to get, as he said, the buffalo robe--a request which
would indicate, of course that the doctor had concluded that old Mr.
Pegram had died, or was about to--a hopeless case. When ushered into the
latter's presence, Enoch began innocently enough:
"De doctah say dat now dat Mr. Peg'am hab subspired, he was to hab dat
ba--ba--buffalo robe."
"What!" shouted the old irascible, rising and clambering out of his bed.
"What's that? Buffalo robe! By God! You go back and tell old Doc Gridley
that I ain't dead yet by a damned sight! No, sir!" and forthwith he
dressed himself and was out and around the same day.
Persons who met the doctor, as I heard years later from his daughter and
from others who had known him, were frequently asking him, just in a
social way, what to do for certain ailments, and he would as often reply
in a humorous and half-vagrom manner that if he were in their place he
would do or take so-and-so, not meaning really that they should do so
but merely to get rid of them, and indicating of course any one of a
hundred harmless things--never one that could really have proved
injurious to any one. Once, according to his daughter, as he was driving
into town from somewhere, he met a man on a lumber wagon whom he
scarcely knew but who knew him well enough, who stopped and showed him a
sore on the upper tip of his ear, asking him what he would do for it.
"Oh," said the doctor, idly and jestingly, "I think I'd cut it off."
"Yes," said the man, very much pleased with this free advice, "with
what, Doctor?"
"Oh, I think I'd use a pair of scissors," he replied amusedly, scarcely
assuming that his jesting would be taken seriously.
The driver jogged on and the doctor did not see or hear of him again
until some two months later when, meeting him in the street, the driver
smilingly approached him and enthusiastically exclaimed:
"Well, Doc, you see I cut 'er off, and she got well!"
"Yes," replied the doctor solemnly, not remembering anything about the
case but willing to appear interested, "--what was it you cut off?"
"Why, that sore on my ear up here, you know. You told me to cut it off,
and I did."
"Yes," said the doctor, becoming curious and a little amazed, "with
what?"
"Why, with a pair of scissors, Doc, just like you said."
The doctor stared at him, the whole thing coming gradually back to him.
"But didn't you have some trouble in cutting it off?" he inquired, in
disturbed astonishment.
"No, no," said the driver, "I made 'em sharp, all right. I spent two
days whettin' 'em up, and Bob Hart cut 'er off fer me. They cut, all
right, but I tell you she hurt when she went through the gristle."
He smiled in pleased remembrance of his surgical operation, and the
doctor smiled also, but, according to his daughter, he decided to give
no more idle advice of that kind.
In the school which I attended for a period were two of his sons, Fred
and Walter. Both were very fond of birds, and kept a number of one kind
or another about their home--not in cages, as some might, but inveigled
and trained as pets, and living in the various open bird-houses fixed
about the yard on poles. The doctor himself was intensely fond of these
and all other birds, and, according to his daughter and his sons, always
anticipated the spring return of many of diem--black-birds, blue jays,
wrens and robins--with a hopeful, "Well, now, they'll soon be here
again." During the summer, according to her, he was always an interested
spectator of their gyrations in the air, and when evening would come was
never so happy as when standing and staring at them gathering from all
directions to their roosts in the trees or the birdhouses. Similarly,
when the fall approached and they would begin their long flight
Southward, he would sometimes stand and scan the sky and trees in vain
for a final glimpse of his feathered friends, and when in the gathering
darkness they were no longer to be seen would turn away toward the
house, saying sadly to his daughter:
"Well, Dollie, the blackbirds are all gone. I am sorry. I like to see
them, and I am always sorry to lose them, and sorry to know that winter
is coming."
"Usually about the 25th or 26th of December," his daughter once
quaintly added to me, "he would note that the days were beginning to get
longer, and cheer up, as spring was certain to follow soon and bring
them all back again."
One of the most interesting of his bird friendships was that which
existed between him and a pair of crows he and his sons had raised,
"Jim" and "Zip" by name. These crows came to know him well, and were
finally so humanly attached to him that, according to his family, they
would often fly two or three miles out of town to meet him and would
then accompany him, lighting on fences and trees by the way, and cawing
to him as he drove along! Both of them were great thieves, and would
steal anything from a bit of thread up to a sewing machine, if they
could have carried it. They were always walking about the house,
cheerfully looking for what they might devour, and on one occasion
carried off a set of spoons, which they hid about the eaves of the
house. On another occasion they stole a half dozen tin-handled pocket
knives, which the doctor had bought for the children and which the crows
seemed to like for the brightness of the metal. They were recovered once
by the children, stolen again by the crows, recovered once more, and so
on, until at last it was a question as to which were the rightful
owners.
The doctor was sitting in front of a store one day in the business-heart
of town, where also he liked to linger in fair weather, when suddenly he
saw one of his crows flying high overhead and bearing something in its
beak, which it dropped into the road scarcely a hundred feet away.
Interested to see what it was the bird had been carrying, he went to the
spot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, which
the crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. He picked it up and
when he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lend
him a knife.
"No," said his son. "Our knives are all lost. The crows took them."
"I knew that," said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when I met Zip uptown
just now, I asked her to lend me one, and she did. Here it is."
He pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latter
expressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him;
a joke which ended in his always asking one of the children to run and
ask Zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one.
Although a sad man at times, as I understood, the doctor was not a
pessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring of
odd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain which
the large practice of his profession put upon him. One of his greatest
reliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he had
been known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh.
One of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed
telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the
neighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least),
spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were
still taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form of
education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it.
Thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of the
country, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers,
principal points of interest, and so on, until all information about
that particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme.
Occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitaries
would be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, for
amusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. On one occasion,
however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "Africa-a,
Africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, he
decided to stop in and listen a while. Having tethered his horse outside
he knocked at the door and was received by the little English singing
teacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon the
class for an exhibition of their finest wisdom. When they had finished
this the teacher turned to him and inquired if there was anything he
would especially like them to sing.
"No," said the doctor gravely, and no doubt with an amused twinkle in
his eye, "I had thought of asking you to sing the Rocky Mountains, but
as the mountains are so high, and the amount of time I have so limited,
I have decided that perhaps it will be asking too much."
"Oh, not at all, not at all" airily replied the teacher, and turning to
his class, he exclaimed with a very superior smile: "Now, ladies and
gentlemen, 'ere is a scientific gentleman who thinks it is 'arder to
sing of _'igh_ mountings than it is to sing of _low_ mountings," and
forthwith the class began to demonstrate that in respect to vocalization
there was no difference at all.
Only those, however, who knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him
well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen,
unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that
could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really,
in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle touch
and gentle step, and a devotion to duty that carried him far beyond his
interests or his personal well-being. One of his chiefest oppositions,
according to his daughter, was to telling the friends or relatives of
any stricken person that there was no hope. Instead, he would use every
delicate shade of phrasing and tone in imparting the fateful words, in
order if possible to give less pain. "I remember in the case of my
father," said one of his friends, "when the last day came. Knowing the
end was near, he was compelled to make some preliminary discouraging
remark, and I bent over with my ear against my father's chest and said,
'Doctor Gridley, the disease is under control, I think. I can hear the
respiration to the bottom of the lungs.'
"'Yes, yes,' he answered me sadly, but now with an implication which
could by no means be misunderstood, 'it is nearly always so. The failure
is in the recuperative energy. Vitality runs too low.' It meant from the
first, 'Your father will not live.'"
In the case of a little child with meningitis, the same person was sent
to him to ask what of the child--better or worse. His answer was: "He is
passing as free from pain as ever I knew a case of this kind."
In yet another case of a dying woman, one of her relatives inquired:
"Doctor, is this case dangerous?" "Not in the nature of the malady,
madam," was his sad and sympathetic reply, "but fatal in the condition
it meets. Hope is broken. There is nothing to resist the damage."
One of his patients was a farmer who lived in an old-time log house a
few miles out from Silver Lake, who while working about his barn met
with a very serious accident which involved a possible injury to the
gall bladder. The main accident was not in itself fatal, but the
possible injury to the gall bladder was, and this, if it existed, would
show as a yellow tint in the eyeball on the tenth day. Fearing the
danger of this, he communicated the possibility to the relatives, saying
that he could do little after that time but that he would come just the
same and make the patient as comfortable as possible. For nine days he
came, sitting by the bedside and whiling away many a weary hour for the
sufferer, until the tenth morning. On this day, according to his
daughter, who had it from the sick man's relatives, his face but ill
concealed the anxiety he felt. Coming up to the door, he entered just
far enough to pretend to reach for a water bucket. With this in his hand
he turned and gave one long keen look in the eye of the sick man, then
walked down the yard to a chair under a tree some distance from the
house, where he sat, drooping and apparently grieved, the certainty of
the death of the patient affecting him as much as if he were his own
child.
"There was no need for words," said one of them. "Every curve and droop
of his figure, as he walked slowly and with bent head, told all of us
who saw him that hope was gone and that death had won the victory."
One of his perpetual charges, as I learned later, was a poor old
unfortunate by the name of Id Logan, who had a little cabin and an acre
of ground a half dozen miles west of Warsaw, and who existed from year
to year heaven only knows how.
Id never had any money, friends or relatives, and was always troubled
with illness or hunger in some form or other, and yet the doctor always
spoke of him sympathetically as "Poor old Id Logan" and would often call
out there on his rounds to see how he was getting along. One snowy
winter's evening as he was traveling homeward after a long day's ride,
he chanced to recollect the fact that he was in the neighborhood of his
worthless old charge, and fancying that he might be in need of something
turned his horse into the lane which led up to the door. When he reached
the house he noticed that no smoke was coming from the chimney and that
the windows were slightly rimmed with frost, as if there were no heat
within. Rapping at the door and receiving no response, he opened it and
went in. There he found his old charge, sick and wandering in his mind,
lying upon a broken-down bed and moaning in pain. There was no fire in
the fireplace. The coverings with which the bed was fitted were but two
or three old worn and faded quilts, and the snow was sifting in badly
through the cracks where the chinking had fallen out between the logs,
and under the doors and windows.
Going up to the sufferer and finding that some one of his old, and to
the doctor well-known, maladies had at last secured a fatal grip upon
him, he first administered a tonic which he knew would give him as much
strength as possible, and then went out into the yard, where, after
putting up his horse, he gathered chips and wood from under the snow and
built a roaring fire. Having done this, he put on the kettle, trimmed
the lamp, and after preparing such stimulants as the patient could
stand, took his place at the bedside, where he remained the whole night
long, keeping the fire going and the patient as comfortable as possible.
Toward morning the sufferer died and when the sun was well up he finally
returned to his family, who anxiously solicited him as to his
whereabouts.
"I was with Id Logan," he said.
"What's ailing him now?" his daughter inquired.
"Nothing now," he returned. "It was only last night," and for years
afterward he commented on the death of "poor old Id," saying always at
the conclusion of his remarks that it must be a dreadful thing to be
sick and die without friends.
His love for his old friends and familiar objects was striking, and he
could no more bear to see an old friend move away than he could to lose
one of his patients. One of his oldest friends was a fine old Christian
lady by the name of Weeks, who lived down in Louter Creek bottoms and in
whose household he had practiced for nearly fifty years. During the
latter part of his life, however, this family began to break up, and
finally when there was no one left but the mother she decided to move
over into Whitley County, where she could stay with her daughter. Just
before going, however, she expressed a wish to see Doctor Gridley, and
he called in upon her. A little dinner had been prepared in honor of
his coming. After it was over and the old times were fully discussed he
was about to take his leave when Mrs. Weeks disappeared from the room
and then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread which
she held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting the
attention of the little audience, said:
"Doctor, I am going up to Whitley now to live with my daughter, and I
don't suppose I will get to see you very often any more. Like myself,
you are getting old, and it will be too far for you to come. But I want
to give you this spread that I have woven with my own hands since I have
been sixty years of age. It isn't very much, but it is meant for a token
of the love and esteem I bear you, and in remembrance of all that you
have done for me and mine."
Her eyes were wet and her voice quivering as she brought it forward. The
doctor, who had been wholly taken by surprise by this kindly
manifestation of regard, had arisen during her impromptu address and now
stood before her, dignified and emotionally grave, his own eyes wet with
tears of appreciation.
Balancing the homely gift upon his extended hands, he waited until the
force of his own sentiment had slightly subsided, when he replied:
"Madam, I appreciate this gift with which you have chosen to remember me
as much as I honor the sentiment which has produced it. There are, I
know, threads of feeling woven into it stronger than any cords of wool,
and more enduring than all the fabrics of this world. I have been your
physician now for fifty years, and have been a witness of your joys and
sorrows. But, as much as I esteem you, and as highly as I prize this
token of your regard, I can accept it but upon one condition, and that
is, Mrs. Weeks, that you promise me that no matter how dark the night,
how stormy the sky, or how deep the waters that intervene, you will not
fail to send for me in your hour of need. It is both my privilege and my
pleasure, and I should not rest content unless I knew it were so."
When the old lady had promised, he took his spread and going out to his
horse, rode away to his own home, where he related this incident, and
ended with, "Now I want this put on my bed."
His daughter, who lovingly humored his every whim, immediately complied
with his wish, and from that day to the hour of his death the spread was
never out of his service.
One of the most pleasing incidents to me was one which related to his
last illness and death. Always, during his later years, when he felt the
least bit ill, he refused to prescribe for himself, saying that a
doctor, if he knew anything at all, was never such a fool as to take any
of his own medicine. Instead, and in sequence to this humorous attitude,
he would always send for one of the younger men of the vicinity who were
beginning to practice here, one, for instance, who having other merits
needed some assurance and a bit of superior recognition occasionally to
help him along. On this occasion he called in a very sober young doctor,
one who was greatly admired but had very little practice as yet, and
saying, "Doctor, I'm sick today," lay back on his bed and waited for
further developments.
The latter, owing to Dr. Gridley's great repute and knowledge, was very
much flustered, so much so that he scarcely knew what to do.
"Well, Doctor," he finally said, after looking at his tongue, taking his
pulse and feeling his forehead, "you're really a better judge of your
own condition than I am, I'm sure. What do you think I ought to give
you?"
"Now, Doctor," replied Gridley sweetly, "I'm your patient, and you're my
doctor. I wouldn't prescribe for myself for anything in the world, and
I'm going to take whatever you give me. That's why I called you in. Now,
you just give me what you think my condition requires, and I'll take
it."
The young doctor, meditating on all that was new or faddistic, decided
at last that just for variation's sake he would give the doctor
something of which he had only recently heard, a sample of which he had
with him and which had been acclaimed in the medical papers as very
effective. Without asking the doctor whether he had ever heard of it, or
what he thought, he merely prescribed it.
"Well, now, I like that," commented Gridley solemnly. "I never heard of
that before in my life, but it sounds plausible. I'll take it, and we'll
see. What's more, I like a young doctor like yourself who thinks up ways
of his own--" and, according to his daughter, he did take it, and was
helped, saying always that what young doctors needed to do was to keep
abreast of the latest medical developments, that medicine was changing,
and perhaps it was just as well that old doctors died! He was so old and
feeble, however, that he did not long survive, and when the time came
was really glad to go.
One of the sweetest and most interesting of all his mental phases was,
as I have reason to know, his attitude toward the problem of suffering
and death, an attitude so full of the human qualities of wonder,
sympathy, tenderness, and trust, that he could scarcely view them
without exhibiting the emotion he felt. He was a constant student of the
phenomena of dissolution, and in one instance calmly declared it as his
belief that when a man was dead he was dead and that was the end of him,
consciously. At other times he modified his view to one of an almost
prayerful hope, and in reading Emily Brontë's somewhat morbid story of
"Wuthering Heights," his copy of which I long had in my possession, I
noted that he had annotated numerous passages relative to death and a
future life with interesting comments of his own. To one of these
passages, which reads:
"I don't know if it be a peculiarity with me, but I am seldom
otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death,
provided no frenzied or despairing mourner shares the duty with
me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I
feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the
eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its
duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness,"
he had added on the margin:
"How often I have felt this very emotion. How natural I know it to
be. And what a consolation in the thought!"
Writing a final prescription for a young clergyman who was dying, and
for whom he had been most tenderly solicitous, he added to the list of
drugs he had written in Latin, the lines:
"In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies
And death stills the heart's last emotion,
Oh, then may the angel of mercy arise
Like a star on eternity's ocean!"
When he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend Colonel
Dyer--he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes--with:
"Dyer, I'm almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing upon
the very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, the
film of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end,
but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done things
that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have never
willfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern for myself. I am
concerned only for those I leave behind. I never saved money, and I die
as poor as when I was born. We do not know what there is in the future
now shut out from our view by a very thin veil. It seems to me there is
a hand somewhere that will lead us safely across, but I cannot tell. No
one can tell."
This interesting speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyes
in death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophical
point of view.
"If there be green fields and placid waters beyond the river that he so
calmly crossed," so ran an editorial in the local county paper edited by
one of his most ardent admirers, "reserved for those who believe in and
practice upon the principle of 'Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you,' then this Samaritan of the medical profession is safe from
all harm. If there be no consciousness, but only a mingling of that
which was gentleness and tenderness here with the earth and the waters,
then the greenness of the one and the sparkling limpidity of the other
are richer for that he lived, and wrought, and returned unto them so
trustingly again."
_Culhane, the Solid Man_
I met him in connection with a psychic depression which only partially
reflected itself in my physical condition. I might almost say that I was
sick spiritually. At the same time I was rather strongly imbued with a
contempt for him and his cure. I had heard of him for years. To begin
with, he was a wrestler of repute, or rather ex-wrestler, retired
undefeated champion of the world. As a boy I had known that he had
toured America with Modjeska as Charles, the wrestler, in "As You Like
It." Before or after that he had trained John L. Sullivan, the world's
champion prize fighter of his day, for one of his most successful
fights, and that at a time when Sullivan was unfitted to fight any one.
Before that, in succession, from youth up, he had been a peasant
farmer's son in Ireland, a scullion in a ship's kitchen earning his way
to America, a "beef slinger" for a packing company, a cooks' assistant
and waiter in a Bowery restaurant, a bouncer in a saloon, a rubber down
at prize fights, a policeman, a private in the army during the Civil
War, a ticket-taker, exhibition wrestler, "short-change man" with a
minstrel company, later a circus, until having attained his greatest
fame as champion wrestler of the world, and as trainer of John L.
Sullivan, he finally opened a sporting sanitarium in some county in
upper New York State which later evolved into the great and now
decidedly fashionable institution in Westchester, near New York.
It has always been interesting to me to see in what awe men of this type
or profession are held by many in the more intellectual walks of life as
well as by those whose respectful worship is less surprising,--those who
revere strength, agility, physical courage, so-called, brute or
otherwise. There is a kind of retiring worshipfulness, especially in men
and children of the lower walks, for this type, which must be flattering
in the extreme.
However, in so far as Culhane was concerned at this time, the case was
different. Whatever he had been in his youth he was not that now, or at
least his earlier rawness had long since been glazed over by other
experiences. Self-education, an acquired politeness among strangers and
a knowledge of the manners and customs of the better-to-do, permitted
him to associate with them and to accept if not copy their manners and
to a certain extent their customs in his relations with them. Literally,
he owned hundreds of the best acres of the land about him, in one of the
most fashionable residence sections of the East. He had already given
away to some Sisters of Mercy a great estate in northern New York. His
stables contained every type of fashionable vehicle and stalled and fed
sixty or seventy of the worst horses, purposely so chosen, for the use
of his "guests." Men of all professions visited his place, paid him
gladly the six hundred dollars in advance which he asked for the course
of six weeks' training, and brought, or attempted to, their own cars and
retinues, which they lodged in the vicinity but could not use. I myself
was introduced or rather foisted upon him by my dear brother, whose
friend if not crony--if such a thing could have been said to exist in
his life--he was. I was taken to him in a very somber and depressed mood
and left; he rarely if ever received guests in person or at once. On the
way, and before I had been introduced, I was instructed by my good
brother as to his moods, methods, airs and tricks, supposed or rumored
to be so beneficial in so many cases. They were very rough--purposely
so.
The day I arrived, and before I saw him, I was very much impressed with
the simplicity yet distinction of the inn or sanitarium or "repair
shop," as subsequently I learned he was accustomed to refer to it,
perched upon a rise of ground and commanding a quite wonderful panorama.
It was spring and quite warm and bright. The cropped enclosure which
surrounded it, a great square of green fenced with high, well-trimmed
privet, was good to look upon, level and smooth. The house, standing in
the center of this, was large and oblong and gray, with very simple
French windows reaching to the floor and great wide balustraded
balconies reaching out from the second floor, shaded with awnings and
set with rockers. The land on which this inn stood sloped very gradually
to the Sound, miles away to the southeast, and the spires of churches
and the gables of villages rising in between, as well as various
toy-like sails upon the water, were no small portion of its charm. To
the west for a score of miles the green-covered earth rose and fell in
undulating beauty, and here again the roofs and spires of nearby
villages might in fair weather be seen nestling peacefully among the
trees. Due south there was a suggestion of water and some peculiar
configuration, which by day seemed to have no significance other than
that which attached to the vague outlines of a distant landscape. By
night, however, the soft glow emanating from myriads of lights
identified it as the body and length of the merry, night-reveling New
York. Northward the green waves repeated themselves unendingly until
they passed into a dim green-blue haze.
Interiorly, as I learned later, this place was most cleverly and
sensibly arranged for the purpose for which it was intended. It was airy
and well-appointed, with, on the ground floor, a great gymnasium
containing, outside of an alcove at one end where hung four or five
punching bags, only medicine balls. At the other end was an office or
receiving-room, baggage or store-room, and locker and dining-room. To
the east at the center extended a wing containing a number of
shower-baths, a lounging room and sun parlor. On the second floor, on
either side of a wide airy hall which ran from an immense library,
billiard and smoking-room at one end to Culhane's private suite at the
other, were two rows of bedrooms, perhaps a hundred all told, which gave
in turn, each one, upon either side, on to the balconies previously
mentioned. These rooms were arranged somewhat like the rooms of a
passenger steamer, with its center aisle and its outer decks and doors
opening upon it. In another wing on the ground floor were kitchens,
servants' quarters, and what not else! Across the immense lawn or campus
to the east, four-square to the sanitarium, stood a rather grandiose
stable, almost as impressive as the main building. About the place, and
always more or less in evidence, were servants, ostlers, waiting-maids
and always a decidedly large company of men of practically all
professions, ages, and one might almost say nationalities. That is as
nationalities are represented in America, by first and second
generations.
The day I arrived I did not see my prospective host or manager or
trainer for an hour or two after I came, being allowed to wait about
until the very peculiar temperament which he possessed would permit him
to come and see me. When he did show up, a more savage and yet
gentlemanly-looking animal in clothes _de rigueur_ I have never seen. He
was really very princely in build and manner, shapely and grand, like
those portraits that have come down to us of Richelieu and the Duc de
Guise--fawn-colored riding trousers, bright red waistcoat,
black-and-white check riding coat, brown leather riding boots and
leggings with the essential spurs, and a riding quirt. And yet really,
at that moment he reminded me not so much of a man, in his supremely
well-tailored riding costume, as of a tiger or a very ferocious and yet
at times purring cat, beautifully dressed, as in our children's
storybooks, a kind of tiger in collar and boots. He was so lithe,
silent, cat-like in his tread. In his hard, clear, gray animal eyes was
that swift, incisive, restless, searching glance which sometimes
troubles us in the presence of animals. It was hard to believe that he
was all of sixty, as I had been told. He looked the very well-preserved
man of fifty or less. The short trimmed mustache and goatee which he
wore were gray and added to his grand air. His hair, cut a close
pompadour, the ends of his heavy eyebrow hairs turned upward, gave him a
still more distinguished air. He looked very virile, very intelligent,
very indifferent, intolerant and even threatening.
"Well," he exclaimed on sight, "you wish to see me?"