• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
Title: Arrowsmith (1925)Author: Sinclair Lewis* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.: 0200131.txtLanguage: EnglishDate first posted: February 2002Date most recently updated: February 2002This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.caProject Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online athttp://gutenberg.net.au/licence.htmlTo contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au--------------------------------------------------------------------------Title: Arrowsmith (1925)Author: Sinclair LewisChapter 1The driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of theOhio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen. Her mother they hadburied near the Monongahela--the girl herself had heaped with tornsods the grave beside the river of the beautiful name. Her fatherlay shrinking with fever on the floor of the wagon-box, and abouthim played her brothers and sisters, dirty brats, tattered brats,hilarious brats.She halted at the fork in the grassy road, and the sick manquavered, "Emmy, ye better turn down towards Cincinnati. If wecould find your Uncle Ed, I guess he'd take us in.""Nobody ain't going to take us in," she said. "We're going on jus'long as we can. Going West! They's a whole lot of new things Iaim to be seeing!"She cooked the supper, she put the children to bed, and sat by thefire, alone.
 
That was the great-grandmother of Martin Arrowsmith.IICross-legged in the examining-chair in Doc Vickerson's office, aboy was reading "Gray's Anatomy." His name was Martin Arrowsmith,of Elk Mills, in the state of Winnemac.There was a suspicion in Elk Mills--now, in 1897, a dowdy red-brickvillage, smelling of apples--that this brown-leather adjustableseat which Doc Vickerson used for minor operations, for theinfrequent pulling of teeth and for highly frequent naps, had begunlife as a barber's chair. There was also a belief that itsproprietor must once have been called Doctor Vickerson, but foryears he had been only The Doc, and he was scurfier and much lessadjustable than the chair.Martin was the son of J. J. Arrowsmith, who conducted the New YorkClothing Bazaar. By sheer brass and obstinacy he had, at fourteen,become the unofficial, also decidedly unpaid, assistant to the Doc,and while the Doc was on a country call he took charge--though whatthere was to take charge of, no one could ever make out. He was aslender boy, not very tall; his hair and restless eyes were black,his skin unusually white, and the contrast gave him an air ofpassionate variability. The squareness of his head and areasonable breadth of shoulders saved him from any appearance ofeffeminacy or of that querulous timidity which artistic younggentlemen call Sensitiveness. When he lifted his head to listen,his right eyebrow, slightly higher than the left, rose and quiveredin his characteristic expression of energy, of independence, and ahint that he could fight, a look of impertinent inquiry which hadbeen known to annoy his teachers and the Sunday Schoolsuperintendent.Martin was, like most inhabitants of Elk Mills before the Slavo-Italian immigration, a Typical Pure-bred Anglo-Saxon American,which means that he was a union of German, French, Scotch, Irish,perhaps a little Spanish, conceivably a little of the strainslumped together as "Jewish," and a great deal of English, which isitself a combination of primitive Briton, Celt, Phoenician, Roman,German, Dane, and Swede.It is not certain that, in attaching himself to Doc Vickerson,Martin was entirely and edifyingly controlled by a desire to becomea Great Healer. He did awe his Gang by bandaging stone-bruises,dissecting squirrels, and explaining the astounding and secretmatters to be discovered at the back of the physiology, but he wasnot completely free from an ambition to command such glory amongthem as was enjoyed by the son of the Episcopalian minister, whocould smoke an entire cigar without becoming sick. Yet thisafternoon he read steadily at the section on the lymphatic system,and he muttered the long and perfectly incomprehensible words in ahum which made drowsier the dusty room.It was the central room of the three occupied by Doc Vickerson,
 
facing on Main Street above the New York Clothing Bazaar. On oneside of it was the foul waiting-room, on the other, the Doc'sbedroom. He was an aged widower; for what he called "femalefixings" he cared nothing; and the bedroom with its totteringbureau and its cot of frowsy blankets was cleaned only by Martin,in not very frequent attacks of sanitation.This central room was at once business office, consultation-room,operating-theater, living-room, poker den, and warehouse for gunsand fishing tackle. Against a brown plaster wall was a cabinet ofzoological collections and medical curiosities, and beside it themost dreadful and fascinating object known to the boy-world of ElkMills--a skeleton with one gaunt gold tooth. On evenings when theDoc was away, Martin would acquire prestige among the tremblingGang by leading them into the unutterable darkness and scratching asulfur match on the skeleton's jaw.On the wall was a home-stuffed pickerel on a home-varnished board.Beside the rusty stove, a sawdust-box cuspidor rested on a slimyoilcloth worn through to the threads. On the senile table was apile of memoranda of debts which the Doc was always swearing hewould "collect from those dead-beats right now," and which he wouldnever, by any chance, at any time, collect from any of them. Ayear or two--a decade or two--a century or two--they were all thesame to the plodding doctor in the bee-murmuring town.The most unsanitary corner was devoted to the cast-iron sink, whichwas oftener used for washing eggy breakfast plates than forsterilizing instruments. On its ledge were a broken test-tube, abroken fishhook, an unlabeled and forgotten bottle of pills, anail-bristling heel, a frayed cigar-butt, and a rusty lancet stuckin a potato.The wild raggedness of the room was the soul and symbol of DocVickerson; it was more exciting than the flat-faced stack of shoe-boxes in the New York Bazaar: it was the lure to questioning andadventure for Martin Arrowsmith.IIIThe boy raised his head, cocked his inquisitive brow. On thestairway was the cumbersome step of Doc Vickerson. The Doc wassober! Martin would not have to help him into bed.But it was a bad sign that the Doc should first go down the hall tohis bedroom. The boy listened sharply. He heard the Doc open thelower part of the washstand, where he kept his bottle of Jamaicarum. After a long gurgle the invisible Doc put away the bottle anddecisively kicked the doors shut. Still good. Only one drink. Ifhe came into the consultation-room at once, he would be safe. Buthe was still standing in the bedroom. Martin sighed as thewashstand doors were hastily opened again, as he heard anothergurgle and a third.The Doc's step was much livelier when he loomed into the office, a
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...