From the Housetops | Page 7

his return he confided to his grim old
relative the somewhat unprofessional opinion that hopelessly afflicted
members of the human race should be put out of their misery by
attending physicians, operating under the direction of a commission
appointed to consider such cases, and that the act should be authorised
by law!
His grandfather, being seventy-six and apparently as healthy as any one

could hope to be at that age, said that he thought it would be just as
well to kill 'em legally as any other way, having no good opinion of
doctors, and admitted that his grandson had an exceptionally soft heart
in him even though his head was a trifle harder and thicker than was
necessary in one so young.
"It's worth thinking about, anyhow, isn't it, granddaddy?" Braden had
said, with great earnestness.
"It is, my boy," said Templeton Thorpe; "especially when you haven't
got anything serious the matter with you."
"But if you were hopelessly ill and suffering beyond all endurance
you'd welcome death, wouldn't you?"
"No, I wouldn't," said Mr. Thorpe promptly. "The only time I ever
wanted to shuffle off was when your grandmother first refused to marry
me. The second time she refused me I decided to do something almost
but not quite so terrible, so I went West. The third time I proposed, she
accepted me, and out of sheer joy I very stupidly got drunk. So, you see,
there is always something to live for," he concluded, with his driest
smile.
"I am quite serious about it, grandfather," said Braden stiffly.
"So I perceive. Well, you are planning to hang out your sign here in
New York pretty soon, and you are going to become a licensed
physician, the confrère and companion of a lot of distinguished
gentlemen who believe just as you do about putting sufferers out of
their misery but who wouldn't think of doing it, so I'd advise you to
keep your opinions to yourself. What do you suppose I sent you abroad
for, and gave you an education that few young men have received? Just
to see you kicked out of your profession before you've fairly well put a
foot into it, or a knife into a plutocrat, or a pill into a pauper? No, sirree,
my boy. You sit tight and let the hangman do all the legal killing that
has to be done."
"Oh, I know perfectly well that if I advanced this theory,--or

scheme,--at present, I'd be kicked out of the profession,
notwithstanding the fact that it has all been discussed a million times by
doctors in every part of the world. I can't help having the feeling that it
would be a great and humane thing--"
"Quite so," broke in the old man, "but let us talk of something else."
A month later Braden came to him and announced that he and Anne
Tresslyn were betrothed. They had known each other for years, and
from the time that Anne was seventeen Braden had loved her. He had
been a quiet, rather shy boy, and she a gay, self-possessed creature
whose outlook upon life was so far advanced beyond his, even in those
days of adolescence, that he looked upon her as the eighth wonder of
the world. She had poise, manner, worldly wisdom of a pleasantly
superficial character that stood for sophistication in his blissful estimate
of her advantages over him, and she was so adroit in the art of putting
her finger upon the right spot at precisely the right moment that he
found himself wondering if he could ever bring himself up to her
insuperable level.
And when he came home after the two years in Europe, filled with
great thoughts and vast pretentions of a singularly unromantic nature,
he found her so much lovelier than before that where once he had shyly
coveted he now desired with a fervour that swept him headlong into a
panic of dread lest he had waited too long and that he had irretrievably
lost her while engaged in the wretchedly mundane and commonplace
pursuit of trifles. He was intensely amazed, therefore, to discover that
she had loved him ever since she was a child in short frocks. He
expected her to believe him when he said to her that she was the
loveliest of all God's creatures, but it was more than he could believe
when she declared that he was as handsome as a Greek god. That, of
course, to him was a ludicrous thing to say, a delusion, a fancy that
could not be explained, and yet he had seen himself in a mirror a dozen
times a day, perhaps, without even suspecting, in his simplicity, that he
was an extremely good-looking chap and well worth a second glance
from any one except