Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (learn to read books txt) 📕

in the late sad light, that a man was tramping the plank walk before the house, hesitating and peering at him. The man was one Wise, a Russian Jew known to the village as “Wise the Polack.” In his shack near the railroad he sold silver stock and motor-factory stock, bought and sold farmlands and horses and muskrat hides. He called out, “That you, Doc?”

“Yup!”

Martin was excited. A patient!

“Say, I wish you’d walk down a ways with me. Couple things I’d like to talk to you about. Or say, come on over to my place and sample some new cigars I’ve got.” He emphasized the word “cigars.” North Dakota was, like Mohalis, theoretically dry.

Martin was pleased. He had been sober and industrious so long now!

Wise’s shack was a one-story structure, not badly built, half a block from Main Street, with nothing but the railroad track between it and open wheat country. It was lined with pine, pleasant-smelling under the stench of old pipe-smoke. Wise winked⁠—he was a confidential, untrustworthy wisp of a man⁠—and murmured, “Think you could stand a little jolt of first-class Kentucky bourbon?”

“Well, I wouldn’t get violent about it.”

Wise pulled down the sleazy window-shades and from a warped drawer of his desk brought up a bottle out of which they both drank, wiping the mouth of the bottle with circling palms. Then Wise, abruptly:

“Look here, Doc. You’re not like these hicks; you understand that sometimes a fellow gets mixed up in crooked business he didn’t intend to. Well, make a long story short, I guess I’ve sold too much mining stock, and they’ll be coming down on me. I’ve got to be moving⁠—curse it⁠—hoped I could stay settled for couple of years, this time. Well, I hear you’re looking for an office. This place would be ideal. Ideal! Two rooms at the back besides this one. I’ll rent it to you, furniture and the whole shooting-match, for fifteen dollars a month, if you’ll pay me one year in advance. Oh, this ain’t phony. Your brother-in-law knows all about my ownership.”

Martin tried to be very businesslike. Was he not a young doctor who would soon be investing money, one of the most Substantial Citizens in Wheatsylvania? He returned home, and under the parlor lamp, with its green daisies on pink glass, the Tozers listened acutely, Bert stooping forward with open mouth.

“You’d be safe renting it for a year, but that ain’t the point,” said Bert.

“It certainly isn’t! Antagonize the Norbloms, now that they’ve almost made up their minds to let you have their place? Make me a fool, after all the trouble I’ve taken?” groaned Mr. Tozer.

They went over it and over it till almost ten o’clock, but Martin was resolute, and the next day he rented Wise’s shack.

For the first time in his life he had a place utterly his own, his and Leora’s.

In his pride of possession this was the most lordly building on earth, and every rock and weed and doorknob was peculiar and lovely. At sunset he sat on the back stoop (a very interesting and not too broken soapbox) and from the flamboyant horizon the open country flowed across the thin band of the railroad to his feet. Suddenly Leora was beside him, her arm round his neck, and he hymned all the glory of their future:

“Know what I found in the kitchen here? A dandy old auger, hardly rusty a bit, and I can take a box and make a test-tube rack⁠ ⁠… of my own!”

XV I

With none of the profane observations on “medical peddlers” which had annoyed Digamma Pi, Martin studied the catalogue of the New Idea Instrument and Furniture Company, of Jersey City. It was a handsome thing. On the glossy green cover, in red and black, were the portraits of the president, a round quippish man who loved all young physicians; the general manager, a cadaverous scholarly man who surely gave all his laborious nights and days to the advancement of science; and the vice-president, Martin’s former preceptor, Dr. Roscoe Geake, who had a lively, eye-glassed, forward-looking modernity all his own. The cover also contained in surprisingly small space, a quantity of poetic prose, and the inspiring promise:

Doctor, don’t be buffaloed by the unenterprising. No reason why you should lack the equipment which impresses patients, makes practice easy, and brings honor and riches. All the high-class supplies which distinguish the Leaders of the Profession from the Dubs are within your reach right now by the famous New Idea Financial System: “Just a little down and the rest free⁠—out of the increased earnings which New Idea apparatus will bring you!”

Above, in a border of laurel wreaths and Ionic capitals, was the challenge:

Sing not the glory of soldiers or explorers or statesmen for who can touch the doctor⁠—wise, heroic, uncontaminated by common greed. Gentlemen, we salute you humbly and herewith offer you the most up-to-the-jiffy catalogue ever presented by any surgical supply house.

The back cover, though it was less glorious with green and red, was equally arousing. It presented illustrations of the Bindledorf Tonsillectomy Outfit and of an electric cabinet, with the demand:

Doctor, are you sending your patients off to specialists for tonsil removal or to sanitoriums for electric, etc., treatment? If, so, you are losing the chance to show yourself one of the distinguished powers in the domain of medical advancement in your locality, and losing a lot of big fees. Don’t you want to be a high-class practitioner? Here’s the Open Door.

The Bindledorf Outfit is not only useful but exquisitely beautiful, adorns and gives class to any office. We guarantee that by the installation of a Bindledorf Outfit and a New Idea Panaceatic Electro-Therapeutic Cabinet (see details on pp. 34 and 97) you can increase your income from a thousand to ten thousand annually and please patients more than by the most painstaking plugging.

When the Great Call sounds, Doctor, and it’s time for you to face your reward, will you be satisfied by a