An American Suffragette | Page 3

brought him back to consciousness in such good condition that the
other doctors were wild over it. In their enthusiastic French way they
heralded the story everywhere. I thought he'd never be allowed to leave
Paris. They wanted to keep him right there and string medals around
his neck and pin ribbons all over his coat, but he wouldn't stand for it.
He's an awfully modest fellow, and he went over to London with Hall,
who swears by him; says he believes he put a new heart in him, and all
that sort of thing. There comes the boat now. Better have your

photographers ready, for all you'll get will be a picture of him keeping
his mouth shut."
As the big English boat swung slowly into its dock, with the help of
half a dozen tugs that puffed and pounded at its side, the newspaper
men and Dr. Earl's family caught sight of him simultaneously, as he
waved his hand and called across the intervening space with all the
abandon of a returning traveler.
He could make them hear now. "Leonora, dear, how are you!" as a
remarkably sweet-faced girl threw a shower of kisses in his direction,
which passed on their way an equal number of his own. "And Hilda!
And for the life of me, there's Frank! Love to all of you!" A few
minutes more and he was with them. He caught the girl in his arms and
gave her a long and tender embrace. Then he turned to the others and
greeted them with all the fraternal warmth natural after eighteen
months' separation.
"How splendid it is to see you all again! What brought you to New
York, Frank?"
"Oh, just to see if I could cross Broadway without being bumped into
by a trolley car or a taxi-cab or an airship. Incidentally, to keep you
from losing your breath and hearing in the new tunnels through which
you will be shot under these New York rivers."
"Tubes, you mean, brother dear, tubes. I've been doing nothing else but
shoot the London tubes for the last fortnight."
"Where I live, in the wild and woolly Rockies, we call them tunnels,"
answered his brother. "Wouldn't the railroad builder howl at the idea of
'tubing the mountains,' and the miner would have a war-dance of
delight at the suggestion that he must 'tube his claim.' These English
airs are all right, Dr. John Earl, but you may as well learn to talk real
American if you expect to chop bones and exploit microbes in this
country," and the young man glowed his admiration while plying him
with badinage.

The first greetings were scarcely over when the newspaper men made
known their mission, Tourney acting as spokesman for them all. Earl
shook his hand warmly.
"I'm awfully glad to see you," he said, "but you know I never give
interviews. I don't know how, to begin with, and I couldn't say anything
that would interest your readers. I have come back to practice my
profession in New York City; that is all I can tell you."
"But that Paris case," pleaded Bedford. "Do tell us about that."
"Did you use the Hindoo method of respiration that the Swami
Bramachunenda gave an exposition of here two or three years ago?"
asked another of the fraternity, and the others followed with different
interrogatives, but Earl laughed and waved them all away.
"I don't know what the Swami did," he said, "but if he is like some of
his brothers I'm ready to believe anything. All that I did, and a great
deal that I never thought of doing myself, or heard of anybody else
doing on this planet, was told in your papers at the time. Really, if I had
anything worth your while as a news story I would be glad to give it to
you--one of these days I may have, but you must excuse me now."
His manner was courteous but unmistakable, and turning away from
them he was soon absorbed in conversation with the pretty girl and his
brother and sister. He hardly took his eyes off the former as he
recounted his adventures abroad.
Three months previously he and Leonora Kimball had been betrothed
in Vienna, and it was agreed that they were to be married soon after his
arrival home. In a social way, the match met the approval of New
York's select set, for they belonged to equally wealthy and prominent
families. The Earls had come to New York from New England, two
generations ago, and the foundation of the family fortune had been laid
in a small block of New York, New Haven and Hartford stock, which
had grown into a huge block of both stocks and bonds from the various
expansions of stock