business men that controlled the town, looking upon all of this with
favor, determined him, although still young, to be one of themselves,
and made him health officer and physician to the county jail and
poor-farm. This confirmed his identification with his work until he
thought of it all the time, riding, walking, at his desk, at meals,
or lying awake at night. In this way, without relaxing his following
of the latest professional knowledge, he came to believe increasingly
in direct observation and experience, and acquired a discriminating
respect for the traditional lore of old men and women. Gradually,
more and more people began to see in him the true physician--working
for work’s sake, giving time and labor to the poor without reward, a
tireless guardian of the lives entrusted to him, a devoted champion and
example of all sanity and wholesomeness.
“Some of his traits, however, still delayed his complete success. He
was often restless, sometimes impatient in argument, and not always
considerate of his opponents. Once he even slapped a recalcitrant
patient. He was deeply humiliated over that, and candid and regretful
over his other defects, but he held that one could do but little by
special effort to change one’s character. He was, moreover, too learned
and quick-witted and plain-spoken to be a comfortable colleague for
most of his fellow practitioners. They felt obliged to look with
disfavor on his preference for simple medicaments and his emphasis on
hygiene, and they were publicly pained and privately severe concerning
his carelessness of appearances and his open pooh-poohing of what he
called ‘the hocus-pocus of the profession.’
“But after his marriage, which was an inconspicuous one, the softer
and finer sides of his nature took the permanent ascendency, and the
community, although it knew little of his family life, felt a new
gentleness behind the firmness of his growing power of command. It was
then that he began the practice, which he would have scorned earlier,
of carrying in his pockets cheerful and humorous quotations as means
for enlivening depressed patients. Thus, slowly but steadily, through
some conspicuous successes and many sure ones, his reputation became
more and more established, until, at about forty-five, he was accepted
by all as unquestionably the chief physician of the town.
“His frankness, however, by no means decreased as his fame advanced,
but people increasingly understood his eccentricities as they
increasingly honored his intellect and revered his character. He never
hesitated to say, for example, that his successes were due more to
experience and common sense than to any scientific knowledge. This
was, perhaps, a limitation of his location so far from the centres of
scholarship, but he would have followed reason rather than authority
anywhere. When the chief apothecary caught cold and died from a
consumption that the old doctor had long pronounced cured, he lamented
that this mistaken judgment had brought him more reputation than any
real cure he had ever accomplished, and he would sometimes regretfully
compare the tremendous exertions that had gone unrecognized in his
earliest practice with the late unreasoning praise of almost everything
he did--‘So hard it is,’ he would say, ‘to establish unpopular truth or
check popular error.’
“In spite of the fact that his penetration so far exceeded the ordinary
that his wit often led him beyond knowledge to track nature to her
lair, he used to grieve that so many things were hidden from him. He
trusted much to the wisdom of the natural course of things, watching
his cases and all their surrounding conditions closely, sweeping away
many of the cobwebs of current practice, and emphasizing chiefly
prescriptions of hygiene. Most diseases, he held, were either hopeless
or would cure themselves if people would be reasonably careful. After
his income became adequate for his modest needs he disliked to take
money for his services, preferring to get whatever he wanted from the
local tradesmen, and to care for them and their families without charge
on either side.
“Gradually, without decreasing his labors--I have heard that he
made fifty thousand professional calls--he became the community’s
philosopher and friend, as well as its physician. This was especially
the case after he came home, a citizen of the world, from a late
European journey, during which, apparently, he had ignored landscape,
architecture, and art in order to converse with all sorts and
conditions of men. As his earnestness and meditation increased with
age, and his utterance, always unexpected and pithy, grew ever more apt
and forcible, his sayings became widely quoted and accumulated into a
body of doctrine.
“He was by no means chiefly a critic, for, as he said, there were
always more unfortunate men needing encouragement than fortunate men
needing reproof. He maintained that a clean mind and busy hands were
proof against any tribulation, and that happiness lay not in the world,
but within the mind. ‘Whoever would live wisely,’ he would say, ‘must
know what he wants,’ and ‘Good humor bears half the ills of life.’
“It will be long, indeed, before his place and his friends forget ‘the
Old Doctor.’”
XVI
_Breakfasting with Portia_
“Probably few persons who are not professionally interested,” said
Professor Maturin, “realize how earnestly the schools of to-day are
endeavoring not only to conserve the proved excellences of traditional
knowledge, but also to provide new varieties of training that are
made imperative by present-day conditions. Hence the subjects in the
curriculum that appear fads to the fathers--nature study, manual
training, physical education, household science and art, music, and
the fine arts. Probably fewer yet know that American experiment in
one of these fields, especially, has been so notable that the British
Board of Education sent a special commission to study and to report to
Parliament on the teaching of domestic science or household economics
in the United States.
“It was the scientific and comprehensive character of this report, sent
me by a young friend, that first informed me of our distinction in
this difficult field. This same young person had previously overcome
my doubt as to the propriety of making such matters the subject of
academic study by learnedly quoting Xenophon’s Socrates, to the effect
that ‘domestic management is the name of an art, as that of healing or
of working in brass, or of building.’
“It should be understood, to be specific, that she, whom we may
call Portia, as a present student and a prospective propagandist
of domestic science, is about to receive her degree from that part
of one of our metropolitan universities which conducts research in
education and trains teachers both of the ancient liberal arts and
of such modern practical sciences as Portia’s own. After several
years devoted to the usual college subjects, her attention is now
concentrated upon educational principles and procedures in general, and
on the practice and presentation of her chosen subject in particular.
For a considerable period she has overflowed with such interesting
information concerning the chemistry and biology, the production and
manufacture, and the preparation and the assimilation of foods, that I
was more than delighted one day to be invited to partake of a breakfast
prepared by her and an associate, as one of the numerous practical
tests of knowledge and efficiency demanded by her curriculum.
“On my arrival, the Princess Ida who presided over this department
of the modern Athenaeum exhibited the equipment for the study and
practice of her science,--a technical library of many volumes;
elaborate collections of current reports and monographs; photographs,
charts, and records of investigations; especially equipped offices
and lecture and conference rooms,--and then presented me to the
half-dozen instructors under her direction. The laboratories for the
biological and chemical study of food materials were not unlike others
that I had seen; but those devoted especially to food preparation
uniquely combined the facilities of an elaborate club kitchen with the
scientific immaculateness of a surgery. The whole I was told, by the
way, was merely preparatory to a really perfect set of laboratories
which were building.
“A tile-topped laboratory table, with a skeleton gas-stove above, and
various drawers and cupboards beneath, stood in the centre of the room
for the demonstrator. About this, arranged on three sides, like a
banquet table, were perhaps thirty similar but connected desks at which
the students sat in trained-nurse uniform, facing their instructor.
“The right hand drawer of each desk contained such familiar small
utensils as knives, forks, and spoons, along with certain others that
would have seemed strange to our grandmothers; all carefully listed,
their condition and arrangement being subject to military inspection.
Each drawer at the left contained flours, sugar, spices, and condiments
in laboratory precision. The cupboard below each desk, closed by a
sliding shutter, contained measuring-cups, bowls, platters, pans,
and the like; each equipment being adequate for all ordinary cooking
processes. Around the sides of the room were stoves and ranges of
various designs heated by coal, charcoal, electricity, steam, gas, and
oil, not forgetting the professor’s Aladdin oven, or the peasant’s
hay-box cooker.
“Here were also immaculate porcelain sinks where uniformed maids
cleaned the larger utensils. Each student kept her own equipment
neat. Cases and frames held special implements and supplies drawn
from a nearby stock-room, or from library or files. Here and there
were bulletin boards displaying tables for computing dietaries, and
newspaper clippings concerning the cost of living. In one corner, as an
interesting reminder of the needs and possibilities of the simple life
in the midst of this intentionally ideal equipment, stood an outfit
that might be made and used in the remotest rural school--a cheap but
good oil stove, mounted on the zinc-covered top of a packing-box, that
included inexpensive examples of the fundamental implements, and had
an upturned fruit crate for a seat. This entire outfit cost about four
dollars.
“In one of these laboratories, students were making a comparative,
experimental study of breads; halting occasionally to hear from the
demonstrator and ponder the doctrine of the progression of batters
and doughs from corn bread, through waffles, to twin mountain
muffins--‘which are the beginning of cake.’ In another room, fruits
were being preserved separately and in combinations, and in all
mediums from distilled water to heavy syrups. In a third, the visitor
was given, as specimens of material for distribution, a mimeographed
recipe; a blue-print diagram of the conventional cuts of beef, lamb,
veal, and other meats; and a sheet of small photographs showing how
typical cuts of good meat should look.
“Meanwhile, Portia and Nerissa had been busy with the breakfast in
a separate kitchen and dining-room, as like as possible to those in
ordinary homes, yet planned with the best wisdom and taste of the
departmental staff. To this dining-room the pilgrim was now summoned
by his young friend, costumed as a maid and appearing slightly anxious,
for she and her ally were also to serve the meal that they had
prepared. The Princess Ida’s premier acted as hostess, and a masculine
professor and a feminine instructor joined to make a party, typical,
the hostess announced, of sedentary men and of moderately active
women--a statement that apprised me of the fact that I was considered
not merely as a guest, but also as scientific data. The simple goodness
of the linen and china, however, was only that of the discriminating
home, and the growing plant on the table was there, I was told, for
purely aesthetic reasons.
“But superior knowledge and skill entered with the food--stewed prunes
and apricots, astonishing in size, delicious in flavor. Although
I am unaccustomed to breakfasting at noon, and although years of
housekeeping have been unable to blot out the remembrance of previous
prunes, I fell to with avidity. My memory of the ensuing conversation
is somewhat mingled with later talks with Portia, but then or
afterward, I learned that our total consumption of this dish was only
about four ounces, at a cost of approximately three cents for four
persons. A home, of course, must also count the cost of all the food
prepared, but not consumed.
“The delectable quality of the cereal that followed was due, along with
its superior digestibility, I was informed, to its first having been
briefly boiled in order to open the grains, by bursting, to the action
of the gentler after-cooking. The cost of cereal, I was reminded, was
small when compared with that of its accompaniments. We ate one cent’s
worth of cereal, but the sugar upon it cost an equal amount, and the
cream five times as much. But the professor justified the combination
because of the constituent elements of the three; cream being largely
fat, sugar largely carbon, cereal largely protein.
“When later I asked Portia what this protein was, she replied in a sort
of chant, as though she were assisting at some mystic rite: ‘Next to
water, protein is the largest ingredient in the human body, forming
about eighteen per cent. It is similar to the white of egg, the lean
of meat, the curd of milk, and the gluten of wheat.’ This and other
intimations gave me to understand that protein is the _sine qua non_ of
dietetics.
“As we enjoyed the admirable omelet which followed--eight ounces: one
of proteid, one of fat, one-half ounce of carbo-hydrate; cost ten
cents for four--the professor informed me that the nutritive value of
food is measured by the heat it gives off in combustion, the unit of
computation being the calorie, or the amount of heat which would raise
one pound of water four degrees Fahrenheit. Protein and carbo-hydrate
yield eighteen hundred to the pound, fats about four thousand. The
necessary number of calories per day for a professional man is
somewhere between the thirty-two hundred averaged by American and the
thirty-three hundred averaged by Japanese university professors. The
standard is placed at twenty-seven hundred by the special agent in
charge of the United States Department of Agriculture’s investigations
in nutrition. Hard muscular labor requires half as much again. These
figures are the result of measurements, by means of a so-called
respiratory calorimeter, of the entire receipts and expenditures of
the human body, under varying conditions and for periods of from
three to twelve days. These and similar experiments are described in
bulletins published and distributed without charge by the Department of
Agriculture. Recent experiments by other investigators make the ideal
number of calories considerably less.
“Toasted rolls and drip coffee ended our meal; the former weighed
four ounces, two-thirds carbo-hydrate, the remainder equally proteid
and fat; the ingredients costing only two cents, or as much as the
butter used on them. Throughout, of course, no estimate was made of
the cost of labor, an element which, together with rent or interest
on equipment, usually more than equals the cost of food. Fuel costs,
approximately, one-tenth of this amount.
“Coffee was assigned no nutritive value in the tabular statement of our
breakfast that Portia worked out and brought me some days later. But
as a mild stimulant, it does more good than harm, very much less harm
than tea, which, when not freshly made, contains chemicals difficult of
digestion. The coffee we four enjoyed cost approximately three cents.
“When Portia told me that she was also to give a luncheon, with soup,
entrée, salad, and a sweet, I fear that I was too precipitate in my
commendation of her work, my prophecies for her future, and in implying
my willingness again to serve the cause of science. I tried my best,
however, to be discreet, for I am very anxious to be invited again,
and I was rather pleased at my adroitness in presenting her with an
individually bound volume of Ruskin, with the red silk marker at that
page of ‘The Ethics of the Dust’ which says of cooking:
“‘It means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Calypso and of
Helen and of Rebekah and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge
of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices; and of all that is
healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats; it means
carefulness and inventiveness and watchfulness and willingness and
readiness of appliance; it means the economy of your great-grandmothers
and the science of modern chemists; it means English thoroughness and
French art and Arabian hospitality; and it means, in fine, that you are
to be perfectly and always “ladies”--“loaf-givers;” and, as you are to
see, imperatively, that everybody has something pretty to put on, so
you are to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something
nice to eat.’”
XVII
_Summer Science_
“My young friend, Portia,” said Professor Maturin, “was plainly dubious
when I suggested making a week-end visit to the scientific colony
where she planned to spend the summer doing research work in biology.
She did not believe that I would be interested in observing a hundred
college professors and students listening to lectures and looking
through microscopes. She implied that occasional visitors were felt, by
their holiday moods, somewhat to distract the attention of the serious
workers. And, finally, she suggested that I was perhaps temperamentally
unsuited to lead the very simple life that prevailed, the place being
as unlike as possible to the typical summer resort. However, when I
pleaded my sympathetic interest in all things human, modestly called
attention to my reputation for discretion, and gently reminded her
that I had proved an acceptable and even welcome guest among the peace
agitators of Lake Placid, the literati of Onteora, and the artists of
Cornish, she ceased to protest. I might do as I liked; she, of course,
would be glad to see me.
“So it was that I found myself, one calm Saturday evening, en route
for her ‘Marine Biological Laboratory.’ During my sail along the Sound
I found myself amusedly wondering whether Portia’s professors would
prove to be anything like the important mate who gave so many more and
so much louder orders than were necessary, in warping the boat from
the dock. I was pleased to find them rather more like the lights that
later appeared along the shore--some clear and steady, some brilliant
but intermittent, others a trifle spectacular in coloring, all plainly
enjoying a comfortable sense of their importance to the community;
but all of them interesting, and some performing services really
indispensable to human progress.
“The realization of high thinking and, presumably, plain living began
with a six o’clock landing next morning and the writer’s earliest
breakfast in years, watching, meanwhile, coming events cast their
shadows before in the person of a slender spectacled gentleman in
blue, who slowly consumed one roll and a cup of frequently diluted
coffee, while he rapidly assimilated the contents of a thin, black,
scientific-looking volume with round corners and red edges.
“Within an hour, on a smaller steamer, we sighted the red brick,
yellow shingle, and green slate buildings of a station of the United
States Fish Commission. It was because of this station, devoted to
everything that affects our fisheries, and of its especial facilities
for collecting and preserving marine life, that a group of college
scientists established the biological laboratory by its side, some
twenty years ago. Their leader was still the director, and although
most of the administrative details were now delegated to younger
men, he was still regularly in residence, in a cottage erected by
his appreciative colleagues to replace one destroyed by fire, and
surrounded by hundreds of carefully reared pigeons, which for years he
had made the basis of minute studies in heredity, with the aid of two
Japanese artists, who painstakingly recorded the contour and coloring
of every peculiar bird.
“The slow and careful entrance of the steamer into the landlocked
harbor, through passages so tortuous as to make a local pilot often
necessary, indicated the peculiar geographical character of the
locality. So great has been the sea’s erosion that it is difficult to
say whether the rocky shore line most resembled the margin of a cake
at which youthful teeth had been at work, or the end of a flag whipped
into tatters by the wind. It is this intricate character of the region
that makes it the congenial home of many sea creatures elsewhere
obtainable only with difficulty.
“Portia met me at the pier, explaining her somewhat tempered summer
bloom by the fact that she was spending the sunniest hours of the
day indoors in the laboratory. She conducted me through a typical,
old-time New England village of perhaps five hundred inhabitants,
through streets almost as devious as the waterways, and similarly
appropriated by science. Next to the village church, which displayed
the usual placard that the ladies of the congregation were about to
hold a fair where refreshments and a large assortment of aprons might
be had, the village store made the unusual announcement that pure
paraffin and proof alcohol were always on hand, and that microscopes
with all attachments might be ordered. This emporium was even the
subject of a biological joke, which Portia kindly explained to me: ‘Why
was Portrope’s shop like an amoeba?’ ‘Because it was a single cell with
all the functions.’ This comforted me with the feeling that even if the
scientists did take themselves seriously, they yet preserved the saving
grace of humor.
“I was led to the most remarkable lodgings that I have ever occupied,
kept by a publisher’s reader, who had elected to spend her summer in
this way for the sake of variety. I am convinced that she got it, or
at any rate, that she gave it. Her furnishings were of the simplest,
and the strangest, having been leased from the amoeba at ten per
cent of their cost for each month of use--an arrangement which, like
the furnishings, would scarcely have been acceptable to any but an
imagination that had been subjected to the severest strains.
“The roof also leaked, but in such a desultory fashion that it was
about the only thing in the place that impressed me as free from the
influence of scientific efficiency. But the house was directly on the
harbor, my room overlooking that and the laboratory, which occupied a
compound next to the commission. Portia departing to finish a drawing
before the bathing hour, I was left to observe with interest, at a
window opposite, an assiduous young man intently bent over his work,
which, Portia informed me later, was a study of the coagulation of
lobster’s blood. Subsequent observation of a few of his neighbors
convinced me that at least some of the investigators were not
unacquainted with academic leisure. Down by the shore an officer of our
regular army nurses was living in a specimen hospital tent, for the
purpose of testing the capabilities of its construction, texture, and
color for service in the field.