“Veil, vot do ve do? Vot doos de yong man vant?”
“An appropriation for quicklime.”
“Vot you do vid it?”
“Lime every drain and cess in town. Scatter and lime such compost heaps as yours.”
“Do you warrant that to cure our gripes and fevers?” asked Upcraft.
Horace was not thus easily trapped. “I’ll warrant the dysentery will lessen,” he replied. “Give me more money to treat the mosquito-breeding pools and I’d almost warrant the fevers.”
“I maintain that there is insufficient evidence against the accused insects,” insisted the always lawyerlike Honest Lawyer.
Horace had begun to tell them of the experiment at Shea’s camp, when Deacon Dillard interposed the objection that they were dealing with conditions in the village, not out in the wild country where it might be quite different. He sat down, surrounded by the reek of mint juice which clung about all who worked in the minteries. It gave Horace an idea.
“Deacon, I’ve heard that you boast your workmen are the healthiest in town.”
“It’s true, too.”
“Do you know why?”
“Because I pay ’em well, treat ’em well and feed ’em well.”
“That’s well known.” Horace was not above currying favor by discreet and honest flattery. “But it isn’t the whole story.”
“What’s your way of it, then?”
“Are you bothered with flies in your distillery?”
“No, siree!”
“Or mosquitoes?”
“Never see one of the dum things. The smell of the good mint keeps ’em away.”
“There’s your evidence, sir,” said Horace, turning upon the Honest Lawyer. “The Dillard establishment stands near insect-breeding marshland. Nevertheless, no flies, no mosquitoes; hence, no fevers.”
“Post hoc, sed non propter hoc,” growled Upcraft. “That ain’t proof.”
“It’s flub-a-dub-dub,” declared Murchison.
Chairman Levering joined the attack. “You say the canal breeds disease?”
“It does. The fevers have followed its course.”
“Then you would do away with the canal, would you?”
“That’s it,” broke in Jed Parris. “Blow up the poxy Ditch and go back to honest teamin’.”
Genter Latham was on his feet, his face aflame, his eyes brilliant with fever, but his mind under cool control.
“That’s what it might come to, fellow citizens,” he said with forceful quiet. “That, or as bad. If the present excavations are abandoned, if the canal is carried northward to the lake, east of us as the anti-Clintonian busybodies would have it, do you know what it means to Palmyra? Ruin!”
He sat down. An apprehensive murmur passed through his audience. That might all be so, somebody grumbled, but was it any reason for giving this young medical upstart the town’s money to spend on bug-fights? The economy argument was stressed and backed by citations of householders’ rights. Dr. Murchison heavily ridiculed the younger man’s “fairy-tales with flies for hobgoblins.” Chairman Levering’s personal enmity for Horace inspired him to an attack upon the young doctor’s professional ability.
On the other hand, what Squire Jerrold called the “argumentum ad nauseam” had made an impression. Deacon Dillard swung to Horace’s support. Decker Jessup, O. Daggett, Silas Bewar and others of the smithy coterie were there to back up their fellow member. When, after sundry threats of personal violence had enlivened the proceedings, the question was put to general vote, the clean-up forces were found to have won decisively.
Horace went to work. In three days he made himself the best-hated man in Palmyra. With twenty-five dollars’ worth of lime and a corps of volunteers, he invaded barns and outhouses, found offenses in the gardens of such respectables as the Leverings and the Evernghims, scattered Simon Vandowzer’s maggot-breedery, and substituted the pungent tang of the chemical for the more familiar and homey odor of the hot-weather latrine. Lawyer Upcraft, scenting possible business among the new smells, tried to stir up some of his clients to suits for trespass. It came to nothing, because Genter Latham announced that he would bring the best legal talent of the state, at his own expense, to defend Dr. Amlie and his “limers.”
At once the dysentery tapered off, presently dying out. But the fever was more obstinate. While new cases were fewer, the incidence was still above normal provided by the comparatively inconsiderable breeding places of the creeks, now supplemented by the canal pools. Both Latham and Jerrold warned Horace of the impracticability of obtaining a grant for draining these latter. Stoutly though he had spoken for it, the proponent of the mosquito theory realized that his case was neither proved nor proveable. If only he knew more about the mysterious “fomites.” Read as he might, all procurable data—and these were pretty scanty and scattered—left him with a disturbing modicum of doubt at the back of his brain. If the fomites were, indeed, microscopical agencies of disease lurking on the person and in the clothing of the afflicted as well as inhabiting the unhealthful swamps and marshes, then it was only reasonable to believe that flying insects could and did transport them from place to place, from sick man to well man.
Unfortunately no microscopist had yet succeeded in identifying a fomite. If Horace could have produced a sketch of a horrendous crawler, bristling with horns, fangs and stingers, what a telling argument he would have had for the general public! Lacking such concrete evidence, he was prudently inclined to go slow after the initial clean-up. The taunt of “bugs on the brain” had hurt. He had a natural distaste for his growing reputation as a gratuitous busybody, a medical neversweat. Anyway, he had accomplished one good. Palmyra smelt sweeter than before.
– 20 –
If my Uncle Horace is not my Uncle Horace any More, what is he?
(DINTY’S DIARY)
Justice befell the siren-voiced labor-stealers of the Montezuma district. Mysteriously quiescent for months, the fever returned there in exaggerated virulence. Half the working force was laid off. Several deaths were reported. Lock Port and the Western Section still held out their lures, but there, too, malaria appeared. Palmyra deserters began to drift back from both directions to their old jobs. They found the village almost free of sickness. Horace Amlie was doing a good job.
Not without opposition, however. Lawyer Upcraft threatened him with the law. Crabbed old J. Evernghim menaced him with a blunderbuss. T. Lay barricaded himself within his brookside privy and announced that if any man tried to interfere with his rights, he’d squib him like a fowl. Mr. Levering, himself, in spite of his official position, mounted guard over the assorted fragrance of his backyard compost heap, and Horace was obliged to level it at dead of night and in careful secrecy. All of which did not add to his popularity.
“How would you like to be appointed special constable?” asked Genter Latham.
“What for?”
“To give you official authority.”
“I’ll need it.”
“Don’t overdo it. You’re getting yourself disliked already.”
“So are the flies,” grinned Horace.
Only the fact that they had suffered so bad a scare induced the grudging trustees to make the appointment. Thus Horace Amlie, M.D., became the first public health official in the United States. Genter Latham lent him prestige by permitting a dam across his noisome brooklet, since it was no money out of the Latham purse.
Dinty, hearing the news, wrote from Albany where she was not too happily settled in school.
Will you wear a uniform? And carry a staff? I shall be more afraid of you than ever. Do hasten with your old canal so that Wealthy and I may come back on it soon. This is a plaguey fine city, the home of Culture, Refinement and Fashion, and there are many Estimable Young Gentlemen who are admitted to pay their respects at the Academy, on the occasion of our Social Saturday Evening. But the forest is far away, Hudson’s Raging Waters roll between, and the Night Watch stalks abroad.
Golden prophecies t
o the contrary, there was no prospect of any better method than that of the coach for the accommodation of the two little exiles. Still the progress of the canal had become almost normal again. Of the hundred and fifty men sought by Squire Jerrold, more than one hundred answered his call, and Genter Latham was compelled to raise wages to a parity with the rate paid by his neighbor, which he did with a very ill grace. To the east, around Lyons and Clyde, the work still lagged, but the reaches along Ganargwa Valley steadily deepened and leveled.
Inspectors arrived, representing the Canal Commission. Palmyra held its breath. Rumor solidified into authentic good news when the Canal Advocate abandoned its basic principle of printing nothing of local interest to announce that the waters would be let in simultaneously from the Genesee River, Thomas’s Brook, and the Canandaigua Outlet, and that, before the end of September the eyes of the citizenry would be gladdened by a nautical pageant, followed by a banquet and a ball.
It was a great day when the Queen of the Waters, painted and ribboned like any tavern-hussy, took its first charter party of merrymakers to the Gerundigut Embankment and the marvelous aqueduct across the Genesee, built by convict labor from Auburn State Prison. Work was rushed on a dozen other craft in near-by towns and news came from Pompey of a steamboat which was to plow the waves at the incredible speed of ten miles per hour. (It never did, because the Commission inconsiderately put a five-mile limit on all canal craft.)
Full of patriotism and pride, Genter Latham, who had been to New York City on a business trip, stopped at Albany to pick up two joyous young creatures, freed for the occasion from scholastic trammels. Both were objects of marked attention from several of the male coach-fares, to Mr. Latham’s surprised enlightenment and their own manifest satisfaction. He had not bargained for chaperonage to a brace of maturing spinsters.
They arrived in time for the girls, very much bedizened, to take part in the pageant, Dinty as the Spirit of Erie, Wealthia as the Muse of Transportation. The banquet which followed was the most elegant in the history of the town. Squire Jerrold, the toastmaster, struck the keynote in his initial proposal, “Palmyra, the Beacon City of Internal Improvements.”
“Westward the star of empire takes its way,” he proclaimed. “I venture to assert without fear of successful confutation that Divine Providence has appointed our community to become the metropolis of the western region and eventually a second capital of the Empire State.”
Twenty-two toasts were responded to, and, as appropriate and usual, the guests got patriotically tipsy and helped one another home.
Horace Amlie stayed sober, not from lack of community spirit, but because he had a busy morning in prospect, including an operation for the stone which would be agonizing for the patient and a corresponding nerve-strain for the surgeon. He finished it, successful but limp, and was about to restore himself with a needed dram, when the note of Silverhorn Ramsey’s bugle warned him of that flamboyant person’s imminent arrival. The young captain was in town for the festivities, Horace surmised. The door was pushed open and the graceful figure lounged in.
“I’ve come for my bill of clearance.”
Horace caught a whiff. “You’ve been drinking,” said he.
“Now, by the bowels of Beelzebub! Can’t a man take a single nip without being scathed for it?”
“How can you expect favorable results if you don’t follow directions?”
“Damn your directions, you harping Hippocrates! I’m cured.”
“I hear you say so. We’ll see.”
Horace went over him carefully. “You’re improved,” he admitted.
“Fit for the merry wedding bells and the parson’s blessing,” insisted the young blade.
“Not yet.” Horace leaned forward to touch the other on the knee. “Make no mistake as to my meaning what I said about that, Ramsey,” he added sternly.
“Oh, the rib! Don’t worry. I’ve got other projects,” was the careless reply.
“As many as you like, so they don’t include marriage.”
“What’s that to you? It’s not your patient, I tell you. Our agreement covers only her. Isn’t that true?”
Horace was constrained to admit it.
“Then keep your damned hands off!” He laughed. “Oh, well! Don’t look so sour over it. Shall I tell you what ails you, young Æsculapius? You’re carrying other people’s consciences on your shoulders. Where’s the profit in that? What do you get out of it?”
“Nothing that you’d understand.”
Silverhorn looked about him. “They tell me you’ve got the witch’s bastard from Poverty’s Pinch in tow.”
“I’ve taken on the Crego boy as my apprentice.”
“Going to make a sawbones out of him?”
Horace looked hard into the derisive eyes opposite. “Take these powders as directed, Captain Ramsey. Come for further examination in ten days.”
Silverhorn declined to be squelched. He pocketed the preparation, slid a half dollar across the table and observed,
“The brat ought to take kindly to medicine. That old she-wolf knows some useful things.”
Gossip to that effect had already reached the physician’s ears. “Such as what?”
“Ask the Settlement girls.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Going to try and put her in jail, too?”
“I’m going to put a stop to any illegal practices that I discover.”
“Blueskin!” commented Silverhorn and followed it with a resounding “gardaloo” which, from his full lips bore a particularly rich measure of contempt. “You won’t discover it from me. If Quaila helps a poor girl out of trouble once in a while, where’s the harm?”
“You’ve had medical education. You should know.”
“Phutt to you and all your blue-nosed kind! I say she’s a good witch as far as that business goes. It’s a line of practice I thought of taking up, myself, if I’d finished my medics.”
“I’ll live to see you hanged, yet,” said Horace hopefully.
“Maybe. But I’ll have had my fun, which is more than you will, old sourgut. I’ll be singing in hell when you’re itching in heaven.”
“Don’t let me keep you from your occupations,” said Horace politely. “Is the Firefly tied up here?”
“No more Firefly. Haven’t you heard?”
“No. You’re not quitting the canal?”
“I’m captain and owner now. The Jolly Roger. She’s a Durham, clipper-built. Makes her five miles against wind and current. Drop around this evening at Palmer & Jessup’s Basin for a dram, and if you don’t admit she’s as trim a craft as ever took water, I’ll be a hoggee and dust the towpath.”
Curious as to the change of fortune, the physician accepted. At the basin he had no difficulty in picking out the Jolly Roger. The skull and crossbones of blatant piracy flew at the forepeak. Although but a freighter, she carried all the style of a packet; a cedar deck, two reflecting lamps at the prow, boat’s name and owner’s name in colors, fore and aft, a carved tiller-bar; every appurtenance in the whole seventy-foot length shipshape and of the smartest.
“You’ve got a boat there!” said the visitor admiringly.
“Twelve hundred dollars as she came off the ways.”
“Didn’t hit the grand lottery, did you?”
“Easier than that. I borrowed the stake against my marriage.”
Horace frowned. “Must I tell you again …?”
“Sheer off,” the captain interrupted. “You’re my doctor, not my parson. You jammed my tiller with the Latham rib.” His face darkened; his eyes looked angry and hungry. “Let that content you.”
“Who is the lucky bride?” asked Horace grimly.
“A widow lady from Utica. A cut above you, I expect,” answered Silverhorn with a patronizing smile. “Thirty-five if she’s a day, and seamy as a toad’s pelt. But moneybags, my boy, moneybags!” He smiled. “I’ll be sleeping in a berth more often than in a bed when through navigation opens. Well, keep you
r weather eye peeled and your towrope taut. I’ll see you at the ball, later on.”
Horace stared hard at him. “You’re going?”
“Why not?” was the bland reply. “Silverhorn’s a good little boy now. Fit for any society.”
It was no fault of Dinty’s that she had not seen her Uncle Horace immediately upon her return. On the pretext of a small and assiduously cultivated pimple on her rounded chin, she had twice visited his new quarters. Both times he was out. On her second call she elected to wait, but vainly. Admitted by Unk Zeb, she inspected the premises with a critical eye which observed dust in places beyond male discernment. Plainly her attentions were needed. To her satisfaction, the sampler worked by her youthful hands had a place of honor on the office wall, between the Hamilton sheepskin and the State Medical certificate. The more interesting of his medical books, however, as she discovered to her resentful disappointment, were under lock and key. Now that she was growing up, there was matter in some of these volumes, she felt sure, that would be profitable for her to know. It was mean of Uncle Horace to keep them segregated.
On the day before the cotillion Horace had his first conversation with her. She was sitting in the bay window of the Jerrold household, as he came in sight on Fleetfoot, having attended an accident at the ropewalk. She had been reading Gilpin’s Monument of Parental Affection, a most improving treatise but not her habitual choice in literature. This might mean any one of several things, the most likely being that it was an imposition of penance for breach of domestic discipline. Upon catching sight of the doctor, she flung Gilpin into a corner and rushed to the door, yoo-hooing in what her mother afterward stigmatized as an unmaidenly and hoydenish manner.
Horace vaulted out of the saddle, leaving Fleetfoot “hitched to the grass,” and went to meet her. It was cleaning day and, although the Jerrolds kept a living-in, seven-day hired girl, the daughter of the household was expected to help, wherefore she was still in apron and kilted-up skirts, and looked to Horace but little older than the Tilly Tomboy who had first amended the Widow Harte’s frowsty housewifery. She hurled herself upon him.
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