Notwithstanding explicit diagrams in the book, he was having trouble with an angle when he became aware that he was under observation. Two little girls were standing on the sidewalk, contemplating him in solemn silence. He gave them a polite good morning which they returned in kind, and continued with his task. Presently the smaller girl said, in a clear-carrying voice obviously intended for his ear,
“When I had the fever, our doctor bled me until I fainted.”
The other responded, “I had ten leeches.”
After this interchange, there was a silence. He heard the gate swing complainingly on its hinges. The pair were in the yard. One of them was coughing significantly. Patiently he turned around.
“I am Dinty Jerrold,” said the smaller girl. “This is my best friend, Wealthia Latham.”
“How do you do?” said Dr. Amlie.
Dinty gave critical consideration to the work in progress.
“You could hire a good carpenter for six shillings a day,” she observed.
Dr. Amlie removed two nails from his mouth and said, “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
“We heard you hammering and stopped to make your acquaintance.”
“I’m afraid I’m not prepared for callers.”
“Then we’ll sit on the fence.”
They climbed up, disposing their skirts with propriety. The larger girl said in a soft, throaty voice, “I used to live in this house.”
“Did you?” said the doctor with no great interest. “When?”
“When it was new. I was born here.”
“That was before her pa got so rich,” explained Dinty. “He is awfly rich. Richer than my pa. It is nice to be rich,” she added complacently.
“I daresay.” The young man resumed his work.
“What are the shelves for?”
“Books and medicines.”
“Then I don’t think you are doing it right.”
“What isn’t right about it?” he demanded.
“You’re setting the plank flat. When a medicine bottle tips over, it could roll off. But if you slope the plank in, the bottle would roll against the wall.”
Dr. Amlie looked at the small wiseacre, glanced into the printed “Assistant” and tossed it into a corner.
“Dinty’s cruel smart,” said her admiring companion. She stood up on the fence to peer in at the cluttered floor. “What a lot of books!” she admired. “Have you read them all?”
“Yes.”
“You must be cruel learned.”
“I endeavor to keep abreast of my profession,” he said modestly.
“I’d like to read ’em,” said Dinty.
“They are not for little girls to read.”
“She reads everything,” put in Wealthia. “I don’t see why.”
“How else are you going to find out what you want to know?” said Dinty. She eyed the littered floor disparagingly. “What a mess!” she commented. “Don’t you want us to clear it up?”
“Would you?” he said gratefully.
They flopped joyously to earth and made such a rush for the door that, half way through it, they tripped and sprawled. Still sitting, they addressed one another in a mock antiphony.
Dinty: “Ask your pardon.”
Wealthia: “Grant you grace.”
Duet: “Hope the cat’ll spit’n your face.”
Thereupon they went off into gales of imbecile laughter, sobered suddenly, jumped up and set about their task with diligence. Amidst the welter that strewed the floor Dinty came upon a scroll which she hung upon the wall, the better to read it. It was inscribed,
HORACE AMLIE, M.D.
Certificated in Physic & Surgery,
New York State Board.
FEES
Bleeding 12½ c.
Leeching 12½ c.
Purging 12½ c.
Cupping 15 to 25 c.
Emesis 15 c.
Reducing fracture Arm $1.00; Leg, $1.50.
Administering quinine or bitters 12½ c.
Extraction 12½ c. per tooth; 3 for 25 c.
Surgical attention to corns 7 c. per corn.
Home visits day, 25 c., night, 50 c., double for cases of a malignant or catching nature.
Consultations $3.00 for first; $1.00 thereafter.
Medicines Extra. Terms Cash.
Wealthia whispered to her companion, “What’s emesis?”
It was not in Dinty’s nature to confess ignorance. “Having a baby,” she replied in the same tone. “The doctor fetches it and you pay him fifteen cents.”
“That’s cheap,” said Wealthia admiringly. “Let’s get our babies from him. Maybe they’d look like him. Don’t you think he’s cruel handsome?”
“Mm-mm-mm, yes,” said Dinty. “But I’m not going to have mine till I’m married.”
They pursued their toil until the last item was dusted and placed. The young man thanked them and produced a box from which he dispensed a lollipop to each. Taking this as dismissal, they bobbed their curtseys in well-schooled unison and departed.
Said Squire Jerrold to his wife at breakfast, “There’s a new young man in town. A physician.”
Dinty looked up from her mush-and-milk. “I know him,” she volunteered. “Dr. Amlie.”
“Oh! You know him, Mischief.” The Squire’s attitude toward this child of his old age was one of perpetual entertainment. “What’s he like?”
“Nice,” said Dinty reflectively, “but violent. He said”—she looked sidelong at her mother—“a bad word.”
“I’m often tempted to say it, myself, when you’re at your didoes,” said her father. “What were you doing to him?”
“He was putting up a shelf all wrong and I told him so.”
“You would!” said the Squire. He turned to his wife. “Young Amlie attended Hamilton College under the learned and pious Dr. Azel Backus, as did my third son. He is doubtless a young gentleman of culture and parts. We must ask him to supper. Another physician would be no bad thing to have in Palmyra.”
“I am perfectly satisfied with Dr. Murchison,” said Mrs. Jerrold with a martyred air. “He understands my sufferings.”
“We must have a few of our representative citizens to meet him,” pursued the Squire.
“It would be nice for him if I was there,” said Dinty complacently. “He knows me.”
“The place for little girls is in bed,” said her mother.
“I hadn’t contemplated inviting any ladies, Poppet,” said the Squire. “But we’ll see.”
Upon receipt of Squire Jerrold’s polite note, Dr. Horace Amlie dressed himself with particularity, set his neckcloth with his best cameo, polished his boots to a fine gloss, imparted a touch of oil to his hair, scented his handkerchief, took his silver-ringed cane in hand, and set out. He had passed the test of the smithy with reasonable credit. Now he was to face the judgment of a higher, though perhaps no shrewder, tribunal. To say that he was nervous would be to misprize the Amlie courage and self-respect. But his color was perhaps a shade higher, his lips set a bit firmer than was his wont, as he mounted the railed steps and lifted the lion’s head which formed the knocker of the elegantly oak-paneled door.
The knocker did not fall. The door was drawn quickly and quietly open. A small hand caught his wrist. Dinty Jerrold, with the finger of caution pressed to her lips, drew him within.
“I wanted to tell you first,” she said in a breathy whisper. “Be very polite to my ma. Listen to my pa; he admires to talk. Laugh at Lawyer Upcraft’s funny jokes even if you don’t think they’re funny. Neither do I. And whatever you do, don’t let ’em see you’re scared of ’em, specially Mr. Latham,” she went on anxiously. She added in a loud and grown-up tone, “Why, here is Dr. Amlie! How do you do, Dr. Amlie? Pray come in, Dr. Amlie; my dear parents are expecting you.”
The Jerrolds, husband and wife, gave him a pleasant greeting. Deacon Dillard, faintly scented with the mint whose distillation Was making him one of the rich and respected men of the r
egion, nodded stiffly to him from a rosewood sofa and resumed his conversation with Lawyer Upcraft. From the other corner Genter Latham gave the newcomer a quick glance in which there was no acknowledgment of recognition. Mr. Van Wie sat, straight-backed in a straight-backed chair, making noiseless estimates with his lips. The host presented the stranger in handsome terms. The Rev. Theron Strang, he explained, was unable to attend as he was wrestling with his Sunday discourse, which would probably be a riproarer.
“Why, Mr. Jerrold!” said his wife in tittering reproof.
A peach brandy was served and the company went in to supper. The Jerrolds lived sumptuously. Silver, glass and napery were of the best and there was a sound French wine of the rich vintage of 1814. Watchful from her observation post at a small stand set in the window embrasure, Dinty marked with approval the young man’s moderation as the bottle passed. The other guests were less cautious. Presently they were plying the stranger with questions, all but her father who sat back quietly smiling, and Mrs. Jerrold who sipped elderberry brew in a ladylike manner and said nothing, as was expected of her. Dinty did not approve of the persistency of the interlocutors, Lawyer Upcraft leading like a cross-examiner in court. She deemed it less than polite.
But she soon felt pride in the way in which her protégé stood up under the fire. To all questions pertaining to his attainments and career, he returned frank and full answers. The little listener, her ears fairly wiggling in her eagerness to miss nothing, gathered a pretty complete biography.
Young Amlie had graduated from Hamilton College in the class of 1818 just before his nineteenth birthday.
“With honors,” smilingly interpolated the host. “I took the liberty of examining the report for that year.”
“Who did you ride with?” asked Upcraft. As Dinty knew, he was appraising the other’s training, gathered from the experience of “riding with” some knowledgeable practitioner.
“First with Dr. Swift of Schenectady.”
“Did you find his instructions satisfactory?”
“No,” said the young man bluntly. “I wasted my time and my two-hundred-dollar fee. He had no apparatus, no specimens in materia medica or anatomy, nothing but a damaged skeleton, a cabinet of purges and emetics, and a copy of Thomas’s Practice with three chapters missing.”
“I have heard,” put in the Squire, “that few practitioners ever open a book after they are established.”
“That is not true of those who attended Fairfield Medical College, where I took the course after quitting Dr. Swift,” declared Horace loyally. “Most of them were earnest students of the science. Still less would it apply to the learned Dr. Vought with whom I finished my riding.”
“Book learning, book learning,” croaked Mr. Van Wie. “A skilled midwife brings my children into the world, and I’ll warrant you she never read a book nor needed to.”
“Vought? Dr. John G. Vought?” sniffed Deacon Dillard. “Our Dr. Murchison declares him little better than an experimenting quack.”
Dr. Amlie flushed to his youthful forehead but held himself under control. “Medical men differ in creed and opinion as do the clergy and the bar,” said he.
“I have heard that Dr. Vought neither bleeds nor purges,” boomed Lawyer Upcraft with the fervor of one on the scent of heresy. “How otherwise can the body be voided of its evil humors?”
“Dr. Vought does not discard these methods. But he deplores their excessive use which depletes the patient’s strength. There are milder expedients.”
“A steamer,” barked Mr. Van Wie. “A sweater. Is that your school?”
“Yes,” put in the lawyer with a side glance at Latham. “Define your craft and practice. Are you Sangradorian, Morrisonian, Thomsonian? Do you profess the magnetical art or are you learned in the erudition of the herbist or florist? Are you phlogistic or antiphlogistic, a purger or a puker, a bleeder or a stimulator? Do you follow the diluters and Dr. Hahnemann? A doctor must stand to his creed.”
Horace Amlie turned his deceptively ingenuous smile upon the legal light. “I perceive that you have been recently pleading a medical action, sir.”
“I have. And I prevailed against the Medical Society of the State of New York, young man,” bragged Upcraft.
“Then I should be bold, indeed, to submit myself to your cross-examination,” said Horace blandly. The lawyer blinked.
“Perhaps you hold with no one school,” smiled Squire Jerrold. “Still, you must have your own ideas.”
The other hesitated. “Care of the body,” he said at length. “Cleanliness. Healing medicaments as needful, administered with care and in moderation. Aiding the system to throw off its ailments and detriments.”
“You’ll gain a thin living here on that program,” stated Genter Latham. “We expect more for our money.”
Upcraft returned to the charge. “This Dr. Vought—I am told that he administers corrupt matter from sick cattle under pretense that it cures the smallpox.”
“Prevents, not cures,” corrected the physician.
“Do you hold with that?” asked Deacon Dillard.
“I have specimens of the kine-vaccine in my medicine chest. I would not be without it,” said the doctor stoutly.
“It ought to be prohibited by law,” averred the man of law.
“It ought to be compulsory by law,” asserted the young man hotly.
“Would you give physicians authority to rub a foreign substance into a patient’s blood, willy-nilly?”
“I would. For the protection of the general health.”
Genter Latham folded his thick arms and glared across them with a look like the bristle of steel over a parapet. “Lord help any doctor that laid pox-knife to me or mine, without my consent!”
“I wager Sarah Dorch wishes she’d got vaccinated before it was too late,” piped Dinty importantly.
At the mention of the name an uncomfortable stir was apparent to the stranger. Squire Jerrold shot a swift, covert glance at Genter Latham. Lawyer Upcraft coughed behind his hand. Deacon Dillard and Mr. Van Wie began a hasty conversation about nothing. Mrs. Jerrold said in a strained, shocked whisper,
“Dinty!”
Foreseeing that she would soon be squelched and with the laudable design of imparting information whilst there was still time, the child addressed Dr. Amlie.
“She used to be so pretty. The smallpox went to her face and now she’s awful. I’d rather be cow-poxed any time than look like poor Sarah.”
“To bed at once, Chattertongue,” snapped Mrs. Jerrold.
Dinty cast a look of appeal at her father. Perceiving no support in that quarter, she rose with a martyred air.
“I’m sure I don’t know what I said,” she sighed. “Anything I say, I seem to talk too much. Good night, all.”
Dr. Amlie was the only guest to return the exile’s melancholy farewell.
The investigating committee now proceeded with an inquiry into Dr. Amlie’s personal circumstances and condition. Was he married? He was not. Betrothed? No. Intentions? None. What was his religion? His political affiliation? His opinion of Governor Clinton and Andrew Jackson? How did he feel about the Grand Canal? Did he belong to the militia? Was he a Mason? What were his financial expectations?
He answered or parried the questions as best he was able. Checking up afterward, the inquisitors decided that they had got little more out of him than he was pleased to let them know.
Deacon Dillard, Mr. Van Wie and Lawyer Upcraft left early to attend a trustee meeting. Upon their departure, Genter Latham addressed the young outlander with an air of intending to get at the truth and being satisfied with nothing less.
“Now then, young sir, what fetches you to Palmyra?”
“The canal.”
“You believe that it will bring prosperity?”
“I do.”
“So you follow it. To get the dollars, you go where the dollars are. A sound principle,” approved the great man.
“I have my living to make,” said Horace Am
lie frankly. “I am interested in the canal on that side, but for other reasons, also. Wherever the canal goes, fever follows. In the marshes it almost stopped the work.”
“We—that is, Mr. Latham and myself—were considering a contract there,” said the Squire. The magnate scowled. He disliked having his business affairs discussed with outsiders.
“Risky,” said Horace.
“Folderol-diddle!” barked Genter Latham. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Where’s the risk?”
“Another such epidemic might drive away the workmen and imperil the whole project.”
“Pooh! We’ve had no trouble getting diggers around here.”
“Not yet, perhaps. The miasmas set in with warmer weather.” He meditated, then continued, “I have some ideas about checking the malaria before it spreads too far. It would be a national calamity if the great work were hampered.”
“A patriot,” jeered Latham. “A Clintonian patriot. We’re all Clintonians while the contracts fatten our weaselskins. Eh, Jerrold?”
“It is the only faction for a gentleman,” pronounced the Squire. “I consider our young friend to be in the right. It is a national duty to see the work through to a magnificent completion.”
“The fevers will never stop it,” declared Latham. “What is fever? It comes and goes. Nobody knows why. Do you think you know, young man?”
“Not yet.”
“Then let the hare lie in its hollow. You get your living from the sick, don’t you?”
“Yes. But …”
“Then what call have you to meddle with keeping sickness away?”
“It’s part of my professional duty.”
“A looby profession, then. If men fall sick, they die or get well. If they die, others step in to take their places.”
“Mr. Latham, do you know how much the canal has been belated, coming through the marshes?”
“What of it? It’s coming through, ain’t it? And it’s going on.”
“Nearly three-quarters of the workmen were laid off at once on some of the worst stretches.”
Canal Town Page 6