His profession is almost as old as the daybreak of time. He bled
the ancient Egyptian, blistered the knight of the Middle Ages, and
poisoned the arrow of the Iroquois. He has been preserved in fiction,
pickled in the drama, spiced in romance, and peppered in satire; but
nowhere was he so pronounced a character as in America, in the South.
He knew politics, but was not a politician. He looked upon man as a
machinist viewing an engine, but was not an atheist. He cautioned
health and flattered sickness. He listened with more patience to an
old woman harping on her trouble than to a man in his prime relating
his experience. His books were few, and the only medical journal found
in his office was a sample copy. When his gathered lore failed him, he
was wise in silence. To confess to any sort of ignorance would have
crippled his trade. It was an art to keep loose things from rattling
in his head when he shook it, and of this art he was a perfect master.
In raiment he was not over-adorned, but near him you felt that you
were in the presence of clothes. Philosophy's trousers might bag at
the knees, theology's black vestment might be shy a button, art might
wear a burr entangled in its tresses, and even the majesty of the law
might go forth in slippers gnawed by a playful puppy; but old doc's
“duds,” strong as they were in nostril penetration, must hug the image
of neatness. He was usually four years behind the city's fashion, but
this was shrewdly studied, for to dress too much after the manner of
the flowing present would have branded him a foppish follower. The men
might carp at his clean shirt every day, but it won favor with the
women; and while robust medicine may steal secret delight from seeing
two maul-fisted men punch each other in a ring, it must openly profess
a preference for the scandals that shock society.
At no place along the numerous roads traversed by old doc was there a
sign-post with a finger pointing toward the attainment of an ultimate
ambition. No senate house, no woolsack of greatness, waited for him.
The chill of foul weather was his most natural atmosphere; and should
the dark night turn from rain to sleet, it was then that he heard a
knock and a “Hello!” at his door. Down through the miry bottom-land
and up the flint hillside flashed the light of his gig-lamp, striking
responsive shine from the eye of the fascinated wolf. The farther he
had to travel, the less likely was he to collect his bill. Usury might
sell the widow's cow, for no one expected business to have a daintiness
of touch; but if Doc sued for his fee, he was met even by the court
with a sour look.
A summons to court as an expert witness in a murder trial gold-starred
the banner of his career. It was then that he turned back to his
heavy book, used mainly to prop the door open. Out of this lexicon
he dug up words to confound the wise lawyer. It was in vain that the
judge commanded him to talk not like the man in the moon, but like a
man of this earth; he was not to be shaken from a pedestal that had
cost him sweat to mount. The jury sat amazed at his learning. Asked
to explain the meaning of a term, he would proceed to heap upon it a
pile of incomprehensible jargon. It was like cracking the bones of the
skeleton that stood behind his door, and giving to each splinter a
sesquipedalian name. When told that he might “stand down,” he walked
off to enjoy his victory. At the tavern, in the evening, he might be
invited to sit in the game, done with the hesitating timidity of awed
respect; but at cards it was discovered that he was an easy dabbler in
common talk, not to say the profanity of the flat-boatmen.
Out of this atmosphere there arises the vision of old Doctor Rickney of
Mississippi. He had appeared in court as an expert witness, and the
county newspaper had given him a column of monstrous words, written
by the doctor himself. He had examined the judge for life insurance,
and it was hinted that he had been invited to attend a meeting of the
medical convention, away off in Philadelphia. His professional cup was
now about to foam over, when there fell an evil time.
Bill Saunders, down with a sort of swamp fever, was told by Dr. Rickney
that his recovery was impossible. Bill was stubborn, and declined to
accept Doc's verdict.
“Why, you poor old sot,” said Doc, “you must be nearer the end than I
thought, since you have so little mind as to doubt my word. Here's your
fever so high that it has almost melted my thermometer, and yet you
question my professional forecast. And, besides, don't you know that
you have ruined your constitution with liquor?”
Bill blew a hot breath.
“I don't know nothin' about constitutions nur the statuary of
limitations, but I'm snickered if I'm goin' to die to please you nur
nobody. All I need right now is possum baked along with about a peck of
yams.”
“Possum! Why, by eleven-thirty to-night you'll be as dead as any
possum.”
Bill drew another hot breath, and the leaves on a branch of honeysuckle
peeping in at the open window were seen to wither with heat.
“I've got a hoss out thar in the stable, Doc, an' he's jes as good as
any hoss you ever rid. An' I tell you whut I'll do: I'll bet him ag'in
yo' hoss that I'll be up an' around in five weeks.”
Doc gave him a pitying look.
“All right; I'll just take that bet.”
Doc told it about the neighborhood, and along toward midnight, sitting
in the rear room of a drug-store, he took out his watch, looked at it,
and remarked:
“Well, by this time Bill Saunders is dead, and his horse belongs to me.”
The druggist spoke.
“I know the horse, and would like to have him. What'll you take for
him, Doc?”
“Take for him! That horse is worth a hundred and fifty of as bright
gold dollars as was ever dug out of the earth. Take for him!” says he.
“Ain't he worth it, Nick?”
Nick, a yellowish lout, was sitting on the floor, with his back
against the wall. For the most part his requirement of society was a
mouthful of tobacco and a place to spit, and of the latter he was not
over-careful. He added no more to civilization than worm-blight adds to
a grape-vine, but without him no native drama could have been written.
He was as native to the neighborhood as a wrinkle is to a ram's horn.
In the absence of all other wit, he knew where his interest lay.
Therefore he haggled not to respond to Doc's appeal. Doc had steadied
his wife down from the high shakes of ague, had time and again reminded
Nick of that fact, but had not yet received the five bushels of corn
and the four pumpkins of average size, the physician's legitimate levy.
Here was a chance on Nick's part to throw off at least two bushels. He
arose, and dusted the seat of his brown jeans.
“Doc,” said he, “nobody don't know no mo' about nobody's hoss nur I do.
An' I'm sayin' it without the fear of bein' kotch in a lie that Bill's
hoss is wuth two hundred an' seventy-fi' dollars of as good money as
ever built a church.”
“You've heard him,” was Doc's triumphant turn to the druggist. “But let
me tell you. About a half-hour from now I've got to catch the _Lady
Blanche_ for Memphis, on my way to attend the medical convention in
Philadelphia. I've got to read a paper on snake-bite.”
Nick broke in upon him.
“I'll bet it's the Guv'ment that is a axin' you to do it.”
“Well, we won't discuss that,” was Doc's dismissal of the subject. Then
he turned again to the druggist. “Got to get to that convention; and as
I'll have a good deal of entertaining to do, I'll need a hundred extra.
So you just give me a hundred dollars and take the horse. But you'll
have to be quick about it, for I just heard the _Lady Blanche_ blowing
around the bend.”
The druggist snatched at the knob or his safe, swung the door open, and
seized a hundred dollars.
One afternoon, five weeks later, when the _Lady Blanche_ touched the
shore on her way down, Old Doc stepped off. There on a bale of cotton,
smoking a cob pipe, sat Bill Saunders.
“W'y, hello, Doc!”
Doc dropped his carpet-bag, caught up the tail of his coat, and with it
blotted the sweat on his brow.
“Fine day,” said Bill. “'Lowed we'd have a little rain, but the cloud
looked like it had business summers else. An' by the way, Doc, up whar
you been what's that liquor as distroys the constitution wuth by the
gallon?”
Doc reached down and took up his carpet-bag.
“Bill Saunders, sir, I don't want anything to do with you. I gave you
my confidence, but you have deceived me. And now, sir, your lack of
integrity----”
“Gives me a hoss,” Bill interrupted. “An' say, Doc, I seed the druggist
man jest now, an' he said suthin' about a hundred dollars you owed him.”
Doc walked up to the cotton-bale and placed his carpet-bag on it, close
beside Bill.
“Saunders,” said he, “in this thing is a pistol nearly a foot and a
half long. Now I'll give you my horse all right, even if you are the
most unreliable man I ever saw, and I'll pay the druggist his hundred;
but if you go around the neighborhood boasting that you got well after
I gave you up, something is going to flash, and it won't be out of a
black bottle, either, but right out of Old Miss Betsy, here in this
carpet-bag. I don't blame you for getting well, as a sort of a lark,
you understand; but when you make a serious affair of it, you hurt my
professional pride. Old Miss Betsy is right in here. Do you gather me?”
“I pick up yo' threads putty well, Doc, I think.”
“All right; and see that with them threads you sew up your mouth.
You may be proof against the pizen of the swamp, but you ain't proof
against the jolt of a lead-mine. That's all.”
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. How does the description of the doctor's home emphasize
character?
2. What was the doctor's ability?
3. How does the writer make the doctor a universal character as
well as a local character?
4. How does the writer produce humor?
5. How does the writer arouse our respect for the doctor?
6. How does the writer arouse our sympathy?
7. What character trait does the anecdote reveal?
8. Why does the writer use so much conversation in telling the
anecdote?
9. What advantage does the writer gain by ending the sketch so
abruptly?
10. How does the sketch affect the reader?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. The Druggist 11. The Teacher
2. A Borrowing Neighbor 12. The Minister
3. The Natural Leader 13. The Policeman
4. The Peanut Man 14. The Expressman
5. The Milkman 15. The Freshman
6. The Iceman 16. The Senior
7. The Conductor 17. The College Student
8. The Clerk 18. The Elevator Boy
9. The Postman 19. The Farmer
10. The Lawyer 20. The Grocer
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Select for your subject a person in whom you see many laughable traits,
but whom you really admire. Sum up his characteristics briefly and
suggestively. Make your humor the kind that will awaken smiles but not
ridicule. Use exaggeration in moderation. Be particularly careful to
select words that will convey the half-humorous, half-serious thought
that you wish to communicate. End your sketch by telling an anecdote
that will emphasize one or more of the characteristics that you have
mentioned. Tell the anecdote in a “snappy” way, with crisp dialogue.
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING
By HELEN DAVENPORT
_(1882--). Mrs. Helen Davenport Gibbons is a graduate of Bryn Mawr.
Her literary work appears in various publications. Among her books
are_ The Red Rugs of Tarsus; Les Turcs ont Passe Là!; A Little Gray
Home in France; Paris Vistas.
=A good essay is much like part of a conversation,--the part spoken
by an interesting speaker. It is breezy, unconventional, and free
in its use of familiar terms. How well all this is brought out in
the following extract from an essay on Christmas.=
My husband and I would not miss that day-before-Christmas last-minute
rush for anything. And even if I risk seeming to talk against the
sane and humane “shop-early-for-Christmas” propaganda, I am going to
say that the fun and joy of Christmas shopping is doing it on the
twenty-fourth. Avoid the crowds? I don't want to! I want to get right
in the middle of them. I want to shove my way up to counters. I want
to buy things that catch my eye and that I never thought of buying
and wouldn't buy on any day in the year but December twenty-fourth.
I want to spend more money than I can afford. I want to experience
that panicky feeling that I really haven't enough things, and to worry
over whether my purchases can be divided fairly among my quartet. I
want to go home after dark, reveling in the flare of lamps lighting
up mistletoe, holly wreaths, and Christmas-trees on hawkers' carts,
stopping here and there to buy another pound of candy or a box of dates
or a foolish bauble for the tree. I want to shove bundle after bundle
into the arms of my protesting husband and remind him that Christmas
comes but once a year until he becomes profane. And, once home, on what
other winter evening would you find pleasure in dumping the whole lot
on your bed, adding to the jumble of toys and books already purchased
or sent by friends, and, all other thoughts banished, calmly making the
children's piles despite aching back and legs, impatient husband, cross
servants, and a dozen dinner-guests waiting in the drawing-room?
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. By what rhetorical means does the writer communicate her emotion?
2. Show how the writer makes detail contribute to effect.
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. Christmas Gifts 11. Making Gifts for Friends
2. Giving a Party 12. Collecting
3. New Year's Day 13. Going to Games
4. Fourth of July 14. Buying a Hat
5. Memorial Day 15. Crowds
6. Family Reunions 16. Spending Money
7. Answering Letters 17. Hurrying
8. Holidays 18. Christmas Trees
9. Vacation Days 19. School Celebrations
10. Callers 20. Just Foolishness!
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Write on a subject in which you think you are, perhaps, excusably
foolish. Be frankly honest and genuinely enthusiastic. Write in
such a way that you will make your readers sympathize with you
in your “foolishness.”
SUNDAY BELLS
By GERTRUDE HENDERSON
_At different times Miss Henderson has lived in Indiana, California
and New York. During the World War she gave active patriotic
service. She contributes to various publications._
=The bells of Sunday have given subjects to many poets and to many
essayists. Their sound is full of suggestions of peace, calm and
the solemnity of worship.=
=The writer of the following essay expresses, as she says, the
emotions of many people. It is that seizing upon what is, at the
same time, intensely personal and yet universal that gives the
essay its power.=
=Although the essay is written in a gossipy style it has a quiet
spirit entirely in harmony with its subject.=
Are all of us potentially devotees, I wonder. When the bells ring and
I look up to the aspiring steeples against the sky in the middle of
a Sunday morning, or when I hear them sounding upon the quiet of the
Sunday evening dusk or sending their clear-toned invitation out through
the secular bustle of the mid-week streets and in at doors and windows,
summoning, summoning, there is that in me that hears them and starts
up and would obey. It must be something my grandmothers left there--my
long line of untraceable grandmothers back, back through the hundreds
of years. I wonder if in all the other people of this questioning
generation whose thoughts have separated them from the firm, sustaining
certainties of the past the same ghostly allegiance rises, the same
vague emotions stir and quiver at the evoking of the Sunday bells.
I should think it altogether likely, for I have never found that in
anything very real in me I am at all different from everybody else I
meet.
The Sunday bells! I sit in the morning quiet and I hear them ringing
near. They are not so golden-voiced, those first bells, as if they
had been more lately made; but I think it may be they go the deeper
into my feelings for that. Some people pass, leisurely at first,
starting early and strolling at ease through the peaceful Sunday
morning on the way to church, talking together as they go: ladies,
middle-aged and elderly, the black-dressed Sunday ladies whose serene
wontedness suggests that they have passed this very way to that very
goal one morning in seven since their lives began; a father with his
boy and girl; three frolicsome youngsters together in their Sunday
clothes loitering through the sunny square with many divagations,
and chattering happily as they go,--I am not so sure their blithe
steps will end at the church door,--but yet they may; a young girl,
fluttering pink ruffles and hurrying. I think she is going to sing in
the choir and must be there early. She has the manner of one who fears
she is already the least moment late for flawless earliness. Other
young girls with their young men are walking consciously together in
tempered Sunday sweethearting. And so on and on till the bell has rung
a last summons, and the music has risen, and given way to silence, and
the last belated comers have hurried by, looking at accusing watches,
and gone within, to lose their consciousness of guilt in that cool
interior whose concern is with eternity, not time. Along all the other
streets of the diverse town I fancy them streaming, gathering in at
the various doors on one business bent, obeying one impulse in their
many ways, one common, deep-planted instinct that not one of them can
philosophize back to its ultimate, sure source, though it masters
them all--the source that is deeper than lifelong habit or childhood
teaching or the tradition of the race; the source out of which all
these came in their dim beginnings.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. How does the writer show that her subject has universal appeal?
2. Why does she describe people on their way to church?
3. What types of people does she mention?
4. How does the writer give the essay a quiet spirit?
5. Point out examples of repetition.
6. What is the effect of the last sentence?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. Organ Music 11. Church Interiors
2. The Violin 12. Store Windows
3. An Orchestra 13. Sympathy with Sorrow
4. A Brass Band 14. Weddings
5. Patriotic Songs 15. Receptions
6. Singing in Chorus 16. The Dance
7. A Procession 17. Evening
8. Going to Church 18. A Stormy Night
9. Marching 19. Solitude
10. Team Work 20. Whistling
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Show that your subject is one that appeals to almost every person,
and that it appeals to you in particular. Show the connection
between your subject and various types of people. Give your essay
a serious note, especially at the close.
DISCOVERY
By GEORGES DUHAMEL
_(1884--). A surgeon in the service of the French army during
the World War. He turned to authorship as a means of distraction
from the horrors of war. His work entitled_ Civilization _won the
Goncourt Prize for Fiction. Among his other works are_ The New Book
of Martyrs; Combat; Heart's Domain.
=An open eye and an attentive ear do much to make life
enjoyable,--that is the thought of Georges Duhamel's essay on
_Discovery_. It is evident that the writer deeply appreciates the
pleasure of exploration, even though the exploration be among the
humblest and least-noticed objects. Perhaps some recent experience
turned his attention to the thought, “Discovery is delightful.” At
any rate, he has seized upon the idea,--as though it were one of
the things that he has discovered,--and writes his meditation on
it with the easy interest with which he observes the gravel in a
bubbling brook or a lily floating on the surface of the water.=
Discovery! It seems as if this word were one of a cluster of magic
keys--one of those keys that make all doors open before our feet.
We know that to possess is to understand, to comprehend. That, in a
supreme sense, is what discovery means.
To understand the world can well be compared to the peaceful, enduring
wealth of the great landowner; to make discoveries is, in addition to
this, to come into sudden, overflowing riches, to have one of these
sudden strokes of fortune which double a man's capital by a windfall
that seems like an inspiration.
The life of a child who grows up unconstrainedly is a chain of
discoveries, an enriching of each moment, a succession of dazzling
surprises.
I cannot go on without thinking of the beautiful letter I received
to-day about my little boy. It said:
Your son knows how to find extraordinary riches, inexhaustible
treasures, even in the barrenest fields, and when I set him on the
grass, I cannot guess the things he is going to bring out of it.
He has an admirable appreciation of the different kinds of soil;
if he finds sand, he rolls in it, buries himself in it, grabs up
handfuls, and flings them delightedly over his hair. Yesterday he
discovered a mole-hole, and you cannot imagine all the pleasure he
took in it. He also knows the joys of a slope which one can descend
on one's feet or head over heels, or by rolling, and which is also
splendid for somersaults. Every rise of ground interests him, and
I wish you could see him pushing his cart up them. There is a
little ditch where on the edge he likes to lie with his feet at
the bottom and his body pressed tight against the slope. He played
interminably the other day on top of a big stone. He kept stroking
it; he had truly found a new pleasure there. And as for me, I find
my wealth in watching him discover all these things.
It is thus a child of fifteen months gives man lessons in appreciation.
Unfortunately, most systems of education do their best to substitute
hackneyed phrases for the sense of discovery. A series of conventions
are imposed on the child; he ceases to discover and experience the
objects in the world in pinning them down with dry, formal labels by
the help of which he can recognize them. He reduces his moral life
little by little to the dull routine of classifying pins and pegs and
in this fashion begins the journey to maturity.
Discover! You must discover in order to be rich. You must not be
satisfied to accept the night good humoredly, to go to sleep after a
day empty of all discovery. There are no small victories, no negligible
discoveries; if you bring back from your day's journey the memory of
the white cloud of pollen the ripe plantain lets fall in May at the
stroke of your switch, it may be little, but your day is not lost. If
you have only encountered on the road the tiny urn of jade which the
moss delightedly balances at the end of its frail stem, it may seem
little, but be patient. To-morrow will perhaps be more fruitful. If for
the first time you have seen a swarm of bees go by in search of a hive,
or heard the snapping pods of the broom scattering its seeds in the
heat, you have nothing to complain of, and life ought to seem beautiful
to you. If, on that same day, you have also enriched your collection of
humanity with a beautiful or an interesting face, confess that you will
go to sleep upon a treasure.
There will be days when you will be like a peaceful sovereign seated
under a tree: the whole world will come to render homage to you and
bring you tribute. Those will be your days of contemplation.
There will be days when you will have to take your staff and wallet
and go and seek your living along the highways. On these days you must
be contented with what you gain from observing, from hunting. Have no
fear: it will be beautiful.
It is sweet to receive; it is thrilling to take. You must by turns
charm and compel the universe. When you have gazed long at the tawny
rock, with its lichens, its velvety mosses, it is most amusing to
lift it up. Then you will discover its weight and the little nest of
orange-bellied salamanders that live there in the cool.
You have only to lie among the hairy mints and the horse-tails to
admire the religious dance of the dragon-fly going to lay its eggs
in the brook, or to hear in early June the clamorous orgy of the
tree-toads, drunk with love; and it is very pleasant, too, to dip one's
hands in the water, to stir the gravel at the bottom, whence bubble up
a thousand tiny, agile existences or to pick the fleshy stalk of the
water-lily that lifts its tall head out of the depths.
There are people who have passed a plant a thousand times without
ever thinking of picking one of its leaves and rubbing it between
their fingers. Do this always, and you will discover hundreds of new
perfumes. Each of these perfumes may seem quite insignificant, and yet
when you have breathed it once, you wish to breathe it again; you think
of it often, and something has been added to you.