Dr. Jonathan | Page 2

by high bookcases filled with
respectable volumes in calf and dark cloth bindings. Over the mantel is
an oil painting of the Bierstadt school, cherished by ASHER as an
inheritance from his father, a huge landscape with a self-conscious sky,
mountains, plains, rivers and waterfalls, and two small figures of
Indians--who seem to have been talking to a missionary. In the spaces
between the windows are two steel engravings, "The Death of Wolfe on
the Plains of Abraham" and "Washington Crossing the Delaware!" The
furniture, with the exception of a few heirlooms, such as the stiff sofa,
is mostly of the Richardson period of the '80s and '90s. On a table,
middle rear, are neatly spread out several conservative magazines and

periodicals, including a religious publication.
TIME: A bright morning in October, 1917,
GEORGE PINDAR, in the uniform of a first lieutenant of the army,
enters by the doorway, upper right. He is a well set up young man of
about twenty-seven, bronzed from his life in a training camp, of an
adventurous and social nature. He glances about the room, and then
lights a cigarette.
ASHER PINDAR, his father, enters, lower right. He is a tall, strongly
built man of about sixty, with iron grey hair and beard. His eyes are
keen, shadowed by bushy brows, and his New England features bear
the stamp of inflexible "character." He wears a black "cutaway" coat
and dark striped trousers; his voice is strong and resonant. But he is
evidently preoccupied and worried, though he smiles with affection as
he perceives GEORGE. GEORGE'S fondness for him is equally
apparent.
GEORGE. Hello, dad.
ASHER. Oh, you're here, George.
GEORGE (looking, at ASHER). Something troubling you?
ASHER (attempting dissimulation). Well, you're going off to France,
they've only given you two days' leave, and I've scarcely seen anything
of you. Isn't that enough?
GEORGE. I know how busy you've been with that government contract
on your hands. I wish I could help.
ASHER. You're in the army now, my boy. You can help me again
when you come back.
GEORGE. I want to get time to go down to the shops and say goodbye
to some of the men.
ASHER. No, I shouldn't do that, George.
GEORGE (surprised). Why not? I used to be pretty chummy with them,
you know,--smoke a pipe with them occasionally in the noon hour.
ASHER. I know. But it doesn't do for an employer to be too familiar
with the hands in these days.
GEORGE. I guess I've got a vulgar streak in me somewhere, I get
along with the common people. There'll be lots of them in the trenches,
dad.
ASHER. Under military discipline.
GEORGE (laughing). We're supposed to be fighting a war for

democracy. I was talking to old Bains yesterday,--he's still able to run a
lathe, and he was in the Civil War, you know. He was telling me how
the boys in his regiment stopped to pick blackberries on the way to the
battle of Bull Run.
ASHER. That's democracy! It's what we're doing right now--stopping
to pick blackberries. This country's been in the war six months, since
April, and no guns, no munitions, a handful of men in France--while
the world's burning!
GEORGE. Well, we won't sell Uncle Sam short yet. Something is
bothering you, dad.
ASHER. No--no, but the people in Washington change my
specifications every week, and Jonathan's arriving today, of all days.
GEORGE. Has Dr. Jonathan turned up?
ASHER. I haven't seen him yet. It seems he got here this morning. No
telegram, nothing. And he had his house fixed up without consulting
me. He must be queer, like his father, your great uncle, Henry Pindar.
GEORGE. Tell me about Dr. Jonathan. A scientist,--isn't he? Suddenly
decided to come back to live in the old homestead.
ASHER. On account of his health. He was delicate as a boy. He must
have been about eight or nine years old when Uncle Henry left Foxon
Falls for the west,--that was before you were born. Uncle Henry died
somewhere in Iowa. He and my father never got along. Uncle Henry
had as much as your grandfather to begin with, and let it slip through
his fingers. He managed to send Jonathan to a medical school, and it
seems that he's had some sort of a position at Johns Hopkins's--research
work. I don't know what he's got to live on.
GEORGE. Uncle Henry must have been a philanthropist.
ASHER. It's all very well to be a philanthropist when you make more
than you give away. Otherwise you're a sentimentalist.
GEORGE. Or a Christian.
ASHER. We can't take Christianity too literally.
GEORGE (smiling). That's its great advantage, as a religion.
ASHER. George, I don't like to say anything just as you're going to
fight for your country, my boy,