The Booming of Acre Hill, and Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life Part 4

And then came a solution, and inasmuch as it was brought about by the S.F.M.E., an a.s.sociation of a dozen charming young women in the city forming the Society for Mutual Encouragement, or Enjoyment, or Endors.e.m.e.nt, or something else beginning with E--I never could ascertain definitely what the E stood for--it would seem as if the young ladies should have received greater consideration than they did when prosperity knocked at the Doctor's door.

It seems that the Doctor attended a dance one evening in a dress coat, the quality and lack of quant.i.ty of which were a flagrant indication of a spa.r.s.e, not to say extremely needy, wardrobe. All his charm of manner, his grace in the dance, his popularity, could not blind others to the fact that he was ill-dressed, and the girls decided that something must be done, and at once.

"We might give a lawn fete for his benefit," one of them suggested.

"He isn't a church or a Sunday-school," Miss Daisy Peters retorted.

"Besides, I know Jack Barkis well enough to know that he would never accept charity from any one. We've got to help him professionally."

"We might boycott all the fellows at dances," suggested Miss Wilbur, "unless they will patronize the Doctor. Decline to dance with them unless they present a certificate from Jack proving that they are his patients."

"Humph!" said Miss Peters. "That wouldn't do any good. They are all healthy, and even if they did go to Jack for a prescription the chances are they wouldn't pay him. They haven't much more money than he has."

"I am afraid that is true," a.s.sented Miss Wilbur. "Indeed, if they have any at all, I can't say that they have given much sign of it this winter. The Bachelors' Cotillon fell through for lack of interest, they said, but I have my doubts on that score. It's my private opinion they weren't willing or able to pay for it."

"Well, I'm sure I don't know what we can do to help Jack. If he had our combined pocket-money he'd still be poor," sighed Miss Peters.

"He couldn't be induced to take it unless he earned it," said little Betsy Barbett. "You all know that."

"Hurrah!" cried Miss Peters, clapping her hands ecstatically; "I have it! I have it! I have it! We'll put him in the way of earning it."

And they all put their heads together, and the following was the result:

The next day Jack Barkis's telephone rang more often in an hour than it had ever done before in a month, and every ring meant a call.

The first call was from Miss Daisy Peters, and he responded.

"I'm so sorry to send for you--er--Doctor," she said--she had always called him Jack before, but now he had come professionally--"for--for--Rover, but the poor dog is awfully sick to-day, and Doctor Pruyn was out of town. Do you mind?"

"Certainly not, Daisy," he replied, a shade of disappointment on his face. I am inclined to believe he had hoped to find old Mr. Peters at death's door. "If the dog is sick I can help him. What are his symptoms?"

And Miss Peters went on to say that her cherished Rover, she thought, had malaria. He was tired and lazy, when usually he rivalled the cow that jumped over the moon in activity. She neglected to say that she had with her own fair hands given the poor beast a dose of sulphonal the night before--not enough to hurt him, but sufficient to make him appear tired and sleepy.

"I must see my patient," said the Doctor, cheerfully. "Will he come if I whistle?"

Miss Peters was disinclined to accede to this demand. She was beginning to grow fearful that Jack would see through her little subterfuge, and that the efforts of the S.F.M.E. would prove fruitless.

"Oh," she demurred, "is that--er--necessary? Rover isn't a child, you know. He won't stick out his tongue if you tell him to--and, er--I don't think you could tell much from his pulse--and--"

"I'd better see him, though," observed Jack, quietly. "I certainly can't prescribe unless I do."

So Rover was brought out, and it was indeed true that his old-time activity had been superseded by a lethargy which made the wagging of his tail a positive effort. Still, Doctor Barkis was equal to the occasion, prescribed for the dog, and on his books that night wrote down a modest item as against Mr. Billington Peters and to his own financial credit. Furthermore, he had promised to call again the next day, which meant more practice.

On his return home he found a hurry call awaiting him. Miss Betsy Barbett had dislocated her wrist. So to the Barbett mansion sped Doctor Barkis, and there, sure enough, was Miss Barbett apparently suffering greatly.

"Oh, I am so glad you have come," she moaned. "It hurts dreadfully, Jack--I mean Doctor."

"I'll fix that in a second," said he, and he did, although he thought it odd that there were no signs of any inflammation. He was not aware that one of the most cherished and fascinating accomplishments of Miss Barbett during her childhood had been her ability to throw her wrist out of joint. She could throw any of her joints out of place, but she properly chose her wrist upon this occasion as being the better joint to intrust to a young physician. If Jack had known that until his coming her wrist had been all right, and that it had not become disjointed until he rang the front door bell of the Barbett house, he might not have been so pleased as he entered the item against Judge Barbett in his book, nor would he have wondered at the lack of inflammation.

So it went. The Hicks's cook was suddenly taken ill--Mollie Hicks gave her a dollar to do it--and Jack was summoned. The Tarletons' coachman was kept out on a wet night for two hours by Janette Tarleton, and very properly contracted a cold, for which the young woman made herself responsible, and Doctor Barkis was called in. Then the society itself discovered many a case among the worthy poor needing immediate medical treatment from Barkis, M.D., and, although Jack wished to make no charge, insisted that he should, and threatened to employ some one else if he didn't.

By degrees a practice resulted from this conspiracy of the S.F.M.E., and then a munic.i.p.al election came along, and each candidate for the Mayoralty was given quietly to understand by parties representing the S.F.M.E., that unless Jack Barkis was made health officer of the city he'd better look out for himself, and while both candidates vowed they had made no pledges, each had sworn ten days before election-day by all that was holy that Barkis should have this eighteen-hundred-dollar office--and he got it! Young women may not vote, but they have influence in small cities.

At the end of the second year of the S.F.M.E.'s resolve that Barkis must be cared for he was in receipt of nearly twenty-eight hundred dollars a year, could afford a gig, and so command a practice; and having obtained his start, his own abilities took care of the rest.

And then what did Jack Barkis, M.D., do? When luxuries began to manifest themselves in his home--indeed, when he found himself able to rent a better one--whom did he ask to share its joys with him?

Miss Daisy Peters, who had dosed her dog that he might profit? No, indeed!

Miss Betsy Barbett, who disfigured her fair wrist in his behalf? Alas, no!

Miss Hicks, who had spent a dollar to bribe a cook that he might earn two? No, the ungrateful wretch!

Any member of the S.F.M.E.? I regret to say not.

He went and married a girl from Los Angeles, whom he met on one of the summer vacations the S.F.M.E. had put within his reach--a girl from whom no portion of his measure of prosperity had come.

Such was the ingrat.i.tude of Barkis. They have never told me so, but I think the S.F.M.E. feel it keenly. Barkis I believe to be unconscious of it--but then he is in love with Mrs. Barkis, which is proper; and as I have already indicated, when a man is in love there are a great many things he does not see--in fact, there is only one thing he does see, and that is Her Majesty, the Queen. I can't blame Barkis, and even though I was aware of the conspiracy to make him prosperous, I did not think of the ungrateful phase of it all until I spoke to Miss Peters about his _fiancee_, who had visited Dumfries Corners.

"She's charming," said I. "Don't you think so?"

"Oh yes," said Miss Peters, dubiously. "But I don't see why Jack went to Los Angeles for a wife."

"Ah?" said I. "Maybe it was the only place where he could find one."

"Thank you!" snapped Miss Peters. "For my part, I think the Dumfries Corners girls are quite as attractive--ah--Betsy Barbett for instance--or any other girl in Jack's circle."

"Like yourself?" I smiled.

"My!" she cried. "How can you say such a thing?"

And really I was sorry I had said it. It seemed so like twitting a person on facts, when I came to think about it.

THE UTILITARIAN MR. CARRAWAY

The Christmas season was approaching, and Mr. Carraway, who had lately become something of a philosopher, began to think about gifts for his wife and children. The more he thought of them, the more firmly was he convinced that there was something radically wrong with the system of giving that had prevailed in past years. He conjured up visions of the useless things he had given and received on previous occasions, and an inventory of his personal receipts at the four celebrations leading up to the present disclosed the fact that he was long on match-boxes, cigar-cases, and smoking-jackets, the last every one of them too small, with an appalling supply of knitted and crocheted objects, the gifts of his children, in reserve. His boot-closet was a perfect revelation of the misdirected Christmas energies of the young, disclosing, as it always did upon occasions when he was in a great hurry, a half-dozen pairs of worsted slippers, which he had received at Yuletide, some of them adorned with stags of beads leaping over zephyr walls, and others made in the image of cats of extraordinary color, with yellow gla.s.s eyes set in directly over the toe whereon he kept his favorite corn. I am not sure that it was not the stepping of an awkward visitor upon one of these same gla.s.s eyes, while these slippers for the first time covered his feet, that set Mr. Carraway to cogitating upon the hollowness of "Christmas as She is Celebrated." Indeed, it is my impression that at the very moment when that bit of adornment was pressed down upon Mr.

Carraway's corn he announced rather forcibly his disbelief in the utility of any such infernal Christmas present as that. And as time went on, and that offending, staring slipper slipped into his hand every time he searched the closet in the dark for a left patent-leather pump, or some other missing bit of foot-gear, the conviction grew upon him that of the great reforms of which the world stood in crying need, the reformation of the Christmas gift was possibly the most important.

The idea grew to be a mania with him, and he gradually developed into a utilitarian of the most p.r.o.nounced type. Nothing in the world so suited him as an object, homely or otherwise, that could be used for something; the things that were used for nothing had no attractions for him. After this he developed further, and discovered new uses for old objects. Mrs.

Carraway's parlor vases were turned into receptacles for matches, or papers, according to their size. The huge Satsuma vase became a more or less satisfactory bill-file; and the cloisonne jar, by virtue of its great durability, Mr. Carraway used as a receptacle for the family golf-b.a.l.l.s, much to the trepidation of his good wife, who considered that the vase, like some women, had in its beauty a sufficient cause for existence, and who would have preferred going without golf forever to the destruction of her treasured bit of bric-a-brac.

Mrs. Carraway did her best to stay the steady advance in utilitarianism of her husband. She could bide with him in most matters. In fact, until it came to the use of the cloisonne jar for a golf-ball reservoir, she considered the idea at least harmless, and was forced to admit that it indeed held many good points.

"I think it is perfectly proper," she said, "to consider all things from the point of view of their utility. I do not believe in sending a ball-dress to a poor woman who is starving or suffering for want of coal, but I must say, John, that you carry your theory too far when you insist on using an object for some purpose for which it was manifestly never intended."

"But who is to say what a thing is manifestly made for?" demanded Carraway. "You don't know, or at least you can't say positively, what one of many possible uses the designer and maker of any object had in mind when he designed and made that especial object. This particular vase was fas.h.i.+oned by a heathen. It is beautiful and graceful, but beyond producing something beautiful and graceful, how can you say what other notion that heathen had as to its possible usefulness? He may have made it to hold flowers. He may have intended it for a water-jug. He may have considered it a suitable receptacle in which its future favored owner might keep his tobacco, or his opium, or any one of the thousand and one things that you can put in a vase with a hope of getting it out again."