My Summer with Doctor Singletary

Doctor Singletary, vol 5, part 2

Project Gutenberg EBook, My Summer With Dr. Singletary, by
Whittier Part 2, From Volume V., The Works of Whittier: Tales and
Sketches #33 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Title: My Summer With Dr. Singletary Part 2, From Volume V., The
Works of Whittier: Tales and Sketches
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: December 2005 [EBook #9588] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 18,
2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DR.
SINGLETARY ***

This eBook was produced by David Widger [[email protected]]

TALES AND SKETCHES
MY SUMMER WITH DR. SINGLETARY.
A FRAGMENT.

CHAPTER I
.
DR. SINGLETARY is dead!
Well, what of it? All who live die sooner or later; and pray who was Dr.
Singletary, that his case should claim particular attention?
Why, in the first place, Dr. Singletary, as a man born to our common
inheritance of joy and sorrow, earthly instincts and heavenward
aspirations,--our brother in sin and suffering, wisdom and folly, love,
and pride, and vanity,--has a claim upon the universal sympathy.
Besides, whatever the living man may have been, death has now
invested him with its great solemnity. He is with the immortals. For
him the dark curtain has been lifted. The weaknesses, the follies, and
the repulsive mental and personal idiosyncrasies which may have kept
him without the sphere of our respect and sympathy have now fallen
off, and he stands radiant with the transfiguration of eternity, God's
child, our recognized and acknowledged brother.
Dr. Singletary is dead. He was an old man, and seldom, of latter years,
ventured beyond the precincts of his neighborhood. He was a single
man, and his departure has broken no circle of family affection. He was
little known to the public, and is now little missed. The village
newspaper simply appended to its announcement of his decease the
customary post mortem compliment, "Greatly respected by all who
knew him;" and in the annual catalogue of his alma mater an asterisk

has been added to his name, over which perchance some gray-haired
survivor of his class may breathe a sigh, as he calls up, the image of the
fresh-faced, bright-eyed boy, who, aspiring, hopeful, vigorous, started
with him on the journey of life,--a sigh rather for himself than for its
unconscious awakener.
But, a few years have passed since he left us; yet already wellnigh all
the outward manifestations, landmarks, and memorials of the living
man have passed away or been removed. His house, with its broad,
mossy roof sloping down on one side almost to the rose-bushes and
lilacs, and with its comfortable little porch in front, where he used to sit
of a pleasant summer afternoon, has passed into new hands, and has
been sadly disfigured by a glaring coat of white paint; and in the place
of the good Doctor's name, hardly legible on the corner-board, may
now be seen, in staring letters of black and gold, "VALENTINE
ORSON STUBBS, M. D., Indian doctor and dealer in roots and herbs."
The good Doctor's old horse, as well known as its owner to every man,
woman, and child in the village, has fallen into the new comer's hands,
who (being prepared to make the most of him, from the fact that he
commenced the practice of the healing art in the stable, rising from
thence to the parlor) has rubbed him into comparative sleekness,
cleaned his mane and tail of the accumulated burrs of many autumns,
and made quite a gay nag of him. The wagon, too, in which at least two
generations of boys and girls have ridden in noisy hilarity whenever
they encountered it on their way to school, has been so smartly painted
and varnished, that if its former owner could look down from the
hill-slope where he lies, he