The History of Gutta-Percha Willie

The History of Gutta-Percha Willie.
by George MacDonald
1873
CHAPTER I.
WHO HE WAS AND WHERE HE WAS.
WHEN he had been at school for about three weeks, the boys called
him Six-fingered Jack; but his real name was Willie, for his father and
mother gave it him-not William, but Willie, after a brother of his father,
who died young, and had always been called Willie. His name in full
was Willie Macmichael. It was generally pronounced Macmickle,
which was, by a learned anthropologist, for certain reasons about to
appear in this history, supposed to have been the original form of the
name, dignified in the course of time into Macmichael. It was his own
father, however, who gave him the name of GuttaPercha Willie, the
reason of which will also show itself by and by.
Mr Macmichael was a country doctor, living in a small village in a
thinly-peopled country; the first result of which was that he had very
hard work, for he had often to ride many miles to see a patient, and that
not unfrequently in the middle of the night; and the second that, for this
hard work, he had very little pay, for a thinly-peopled country is
generally a poor country, and those who live in it are poor also, and
cannot spend much even upon their health. But the doctor not only
preferred a country life, although he would have been glad to have
richer patients, and within less distances of each other, but he would
say to any one who expressed surprise that, with his reputation, he
should remain where he was-"What's to become of my little flock if I
go away, for there are very few doctors of my experience who would
feel inclined to come and undertake my work. I know every man,
woman, and child in the whole country-side, and that makes all the

difference." You see, therefore, that he was a good kindhearted man,
and loved his work, for the sake of those whom he helped by it, better
than the money he received for it.
Their home was necessarily a very humble one-a neat little cottage in
the village of Priory Leas-almost the one pretty spot thereabout. It lay
in a valley in the midst of hills, which did not look high, because they
rose with a gentle slope, and had no bold elevations or grandshaped
peaks. But they rose to a good height notwithstanding, and the weather
on the top of them in the wintertime was often bitter and fierce-bitter
with keen frost, and fierce with as wild winds as ever blew. Of both
frost and wind the village at their feet had its share too, but of course
they were not so bad down below, for the hills were a shelter from the
wind, and it is always colder the farther you go up and away from the
heart of this warm ball of rock and earth upon which we live. When
Willie's father was riding across the great moorland of those desolate
hills, and the people in the village would be saying to each other how
bitterly cold it was, he would be thinking how snug and warm it was
down there, and how nice it would be to turn a certain corner on the
road back, and slip at once out of the freezing wind that had it all its
own way up among the withered gorse and heather of the wide expanse
where he pursued his dreary journey.
For his part, Willie cared very little what the weather was, but took it as
it came. In the hot summer, he would lie in the long grass and get cool;
in the cold winter, he would scamper about and get warm. When his
hands were as cold as icicles, his cheeks would be red as apples. When
his mother took his hands in hers, and chafed them, full of pity for their
suffering, as she thought it, Willie first knew that they were cold by the
sweet warmth of the kind hands that chafed them: he had not thought of
it before. Climbing amongst the ruins of the Priory, or playing with
Farmer Thomson's boys and girls about the ricks in his yard, in the thin
clear saffron twilight which came so early after noon, when, to some
people, every breath seemed full of needle-points, so sharp was the cold,
he was as comfortable and happy as if he had been a creature of the
winter only, and found himself quite at home in it.

For there were ruins, and pretty large ruins too, which they called the
Priory. It was not often that monks chose such a poor country to settle
in, but I suppose they had their reasons. And I dare say they