Chapter VIII · The “Medic” (continued 2)

Still another student, one of the juniors when I was “middler,” showed a romantic inclination toward me: I had befriended her in little ways because she seemed forlorn, and because I remembered every little kindness shown me during the first year. She was of the pronounced masculine type and seemed to glory in it, was careless in dress; unprepossessing, and with a heavy voice. She was docile as a lamb with me, and I succeeded in getting her to abandon some of her mannish ways, and to be more mindful of her appearance. She would have been my willing slave; but her devotion was irksome and I nipped it in the bud; I neither wanted to adore, nor to be adored. Even at their best, these inordinate attachments seem like outlets into a false channel—the natural one being impeded. They affect me much as does a woman’s silly devotion to a pet dog when, failing to find its natural outlet, her maternal love degenerates, descending to the dog-kennel, instead of blessing the nursery.

The religious qualms and questions of my school days were still actively disturbing during that first college year, and I did not cease trying to get on comfortable footing concerning them, though knowing it could never be on the old footing. Miss Wilkins, a good orthodox Congregationalist, listening sympathetically to my doubts and difficulties, attempted to help me, finally urging me to let the doubts go and just pray. I tried hard to follow her advice. On my knees alone I prayed earnestly, but could get no awareness of a listening Father; still I prayed, but soon, to my shame and sorrow (and, yes, to my amusement, too), my mind having wandered, I found myself repeating the branches of the axillary artery which I had been studying that evening! I arose with a helpless feeling, convinced that it was useless to try further. The next day when I told Miss Wilkins, grieved, but a bit amused, too, she shook her head—at a loss whether to scold or to pet me.

As soon as our first-year “exams” were over I was wild to get home. Shall I ever look forward to anything with the eagerness I looked to that first home-going? Belle, who had gone at the Christmas holidays, was less eager. I had set the date of arrival a day later than I intended reaching there, just to surprise them. When, on nearing Utica we saw the fertile Mohawk valley, in such contrast to the stony, more picturesque scenery of New England, we grew wild with delight. This was the home country; we were no longer on alien soil. And when the drumlins came in sight, we jumped from side to side of the car, hungrily regarding them. The conductor and the few passengers smiled indulgently; they knew we were going home! That final twenty-five-mile stretch was interminable, and when, at the last stop but one, three miles from our station, we saw our own drumlins, and the familiar houses and trees, my heart leaped for joy. My eyes were blinded with happy tears when the train pulled in.

There was the very platform on which I had stood in the darkness months ago and torn myself from my sister’s embrace! There was the dear old rattly “stage” and the familiar driver to take us to the village! How good everyone about the station looked! I felt like hugging everybody. Our trunks were put on; the horses started; the bells jingled; the windows rattled in the old coach as we jolted along all too slowly over the mile that lay between me and Home!

It was a beautiful summer evening. I glanced hungrily from the windows at every familiar sight—it all seemed so real, yet so incredible—here were the old scenes just as I had known them, unchanged, when so much had been happening to me! “Unchanged?” But there was a change, a glamour over everything, a light that never had been, and never could be again—the light in which one sees a dear, familiar scene on returning to it after his first absence! When we got to the “corner”—the top of the hill that leads down to our house—I climbed out and ran ahead to surprise them before they should hear the stage-bells. I can see myself now, flying down the hill in the June twilight, and running up the steps into Mother’s arms, almost before she knew who it was. Home again, among the four beings I loved best in all the world! If one wants to know how much he loves home and family, let him go away in his youth to a distant city for long months, then let him come back to that shelter and learn to the full the blessedness, the sacred joy of all that is comprised in that word “Home”!

How late we talked that night! Neighbours and friends flocked in to see the wanderer; how good they all looked! but how odd their voices sounded—every r in their words stood out with such distinctness, after hearing the broad a’s and the softened r’s of the New England pronunciation. I spoke of the peculiarities of the New England speech; how funny it had seemed to hear the College professors speak of idears; how the chemistry professor talked of sodar ash, and, unless she was very careful, the Maine elocutionist called her room-mate “Annar”; of how affected it seemed to omit their r’s in words where they should be, and insert them where they did not belong. I said I had noticed a decided difference in Belle’s speech, although she had ridiculed it as much as I did when we went there. While I was speaking of this, a smile went round the family circle, finally they laughed outright.

“What are you all laughing at?” I asked, a bit nettled. They said they guessed Belle was not the only one who had taken on the Boston pronunciation.

“Do you mean me?” I asked incredulously.

“We certainly do.” They had been amused ever since I had arrived to note the change in my speech.

After we had been home a few days my mark in anatomy came. Belle and I had been so scared when we had gone into “Our Caddie’s” examination, that we had cared little about what marks we would get, if we could only squeeze through. On opening the envelope I thought there must be some mistake, for there was my name and number and my standing (in “Our Caddie’s” own handwriting)—“100 plus 1.” She had deigned to write on the card: “This means that you stood ninety-nine on your paper, and, with twenty perfect plus marks in quizzes, it makes your standing 100 plus 1. One other in the class stood the same.” Miss Thorndike was that other. It was always a puzzle to us both that she and I received this high rating from the exacting Dr. Matson, for others in the class were unquestionably better students than we were. My rejoicing, however, was keen—until I thought of what Belle would say; but she was off in the country, and I did not see her for some weeks; still there was that fly in the ointment.

During that vacation I took the agency for a book called “Milestones,” and went about the village canvassing—distasteful work, but I cleared fifty dollars by the means. One day when storm-stayed in a poor little house on the east side of the town, an unforgettable experience came to me. I usually found my best customers in such houses, and rather enjoyed their rapt attention as I expatiated on the treasures in the book; for, discarding the printed tale which the publishers had advised agents to use, I adapted myself to each audience in turn, selecting for bait the pictures and articles that I thought they would best jump at. Sometimes, under their interested attention, I would wax eloquent. I always knew in advance when an order was forthcoming, but enjoyed quite as much getting my victim on the hook as securing the order. As I waited that day in the little house till the rain should cease, a big, strapping neighbour, rushing in out of the storm, puffing and red-faced, blurted out, “John Stevens’s girl’s dead—died at four o’clock.” Little did she or the others know! To them it was just a piece of village news, yet this girl was my dearest friend! I had known her death was near, but to learn of it in that squalid home, and from this loud-mouthed woman, seemed a desecration. I sat very still till the rain ceased, hearing their talk as in a dream.

Our old cat’s time had come to go that summer, and I decided that I might relieve it of its existence, at the same time that I could add to my knowledge of comparative anatomy, and give the children in our street some instruction as well. So, improvising a place in our back-yard under the Baldwin apple tree, I started out bravely to chloroform the cat. But its writhings were too much for me; and Sister and our neighbour, Walter, had to take that part off my hands; the rest I did without a qualm, instructing the big-eyed, eager children about the muscles and viscera, and enjoying the amusing questions they asked.