The Calling of Dan Matthews | Page 4

The preachers knew what
they professed--he knew what they practiced. Society saw them dressed
up--he saw them--in bed. Why, the Doctor has spent more hours in the
homes of his neighbors than ever he passed under his own roof, and
there is not a skeleton closet in the whole town to which he has not the

key.
On Strong Avenue, across from the monument, is a tiny four-roomed
cottage. In the time of this story it wanted paint badly, and was not in
the best of repair. But the place was neat and clean, with a big lilac
bush just inside the gate, giving it an air of home-like privacy; and on
the side directly opposite the Doctor's a fair-sized, well-kept garden,
giving it an air of honest thrift. Here the widow Mulhall lived with her
crippled son, Denny. Denny was to have been educated for the
priesthood, but the accident that left him such a hopeless cripple
shattered that dream; and after the death of his father, who was killed
while discharging his duties as the town marshal, there was no money
to buy even a book.
When there was anything for her to do, Deborah worked out by the day.
Denny, in spite of his poor, misshapen body, tended the garden, raising
such vegetables as no one else in all Corinth could--or would, raise.
From early morning until late evening the lad dragged himself about
among the growing things, and the only objects to mar the beauty of his
garden, were Denny himself, and the great rock that crops out in the
very center of the little field.
"It is altogether too bad that the rock should be there," the neighbors
would say as they occasionally stopped to look over the fence or to
order their vegetables for dinner. And Denny would answer with his
knowing smile, "Oh, I don't know! It would be bad, I'll own, if it should
ever take to rollin' 'round like. But it lays quiet enough. And do you see,
I've planted them vines around it to make it a bit soft lookin'. And
there's a nice little niche on yon side, that does very well for a seat now
and then, when I have to rest."
Sometimes, when the Doctor looks at the monument--the cast-iron
image of his old friend, in its cast-iron attitude, forever delivering that
speech on an issue as dead today as an edict of one of the Pharaohs--he
laughs, and sometimes, even as he laughs, he curses.
But when, in the days of the story, the Doctor would look across the
street to where Denny, with his poor, twisted body, useless, swinging

arm, and dragging leg, worked away so cheerily in his garden, the old
physician, philosopher, and poet, declared that he felt like singing
hymns of praise.
And it all began with a fishing trip.
CHAPTER II.
A REVELATION
"And because of these things, to the keen old physician and student of
life, the boy was a revelation of that best part of himself--that best part
of the race."
It happened on the Doctor's first trip to the Ozarks.
Martha says that everything with the Doctor begins and ends with
fishing. Martha has a way of saying such things as that. In this case she
is more than half right for the Doctor does so begin and end most
things.
Whenever there were grave cases to think out, knotty problems to solve,
or important decisions to make, it was his habit to steal away to a shady
nook by the side of some quiet, familiar stream. And he confidently
asserts that to this practice more than to anything else he owes his
professional success, and his reputation for sound, thoughtful judgment
on all matters of moment.
"And why not?" he will argue when in the mood. "It is your impulsive,
erratic, thoughtless fellow who goes smashing, trashing and banging
about the field and woods with dogs and gun. Your true thinker slips
quietly away with rod and line, and while his hook is down in the deep,
still waters, or his fly is dancing over the foaming rapids and swiftly
swirling eddies, his mind searches the true depths of the matter and
every possible phase of the question passes before him."
For years the Doctor had heard much of the fishing to be had in the
more unsettled parts of the Ozarks, but with his growing practice he

could find leisure for no more than an occasional visit to nearby
streams. But about the time that Martha began telling him that he was
too old to stay out all day on the wet bank of a river, and Dr. Harry had
come to relieve him of the heavier and more burdensome part of his
practice, a railroad pushed its way