The Dop Doctor

E-text prepared by Julie Barkley, Christine D., and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Author of
Between Two Thieves, The Headquarter Recruit, The Cost of Wings
Popular Edition
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.
First printed 6s. Edition, April, 1910.
New Impressions, May (three times), July, August, September, October, November, 1910; January, July, October, 1911; New Edition, May, 1912; New Impressions, September, October, December, 1912; February, May, 1913.
Popular Edition, July, August, September, 1913; April, 1914; June, 1915; July, September, 1916; September, 1917; February, October, 1918; January, 1920; January, 1922; July, 1924; January, 1927; February, 1930; May, 1932; March, 1934, March 1936
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
THE WINDMILL PRESS, KINGSWOOD, SURREY
What have the long years brought me since first, with this pen for pickaxe, I bowed my loins to quarry from the living rock of my world about me, bread and a home where Love should smile beside the hearthplace, and chiefly for Love's dear sake, that men should honour you who, above all on earth, I hold most in honour—a name among the writers of books that live!
What have the long years brought me! Well, not the things I hoped. Just bread and clothing, fire, and a little roof-tree; the purchased soil to make a grave, and a space of leisure, before that grave be needed, to write, myself, this book for me and for you. Hope has spread her iridescent Psyche-wings and left me; Ambition long ago shed hers to become a working-ant. Love never came to sit in the chair beside the ingle. An ocean heaves between us, only for nightly dreams and waking thoughts to span. Were those dear eyes to see me as I am to-day, I wonder whether they would know me? For I grow grey, and furrows deepen in the forehead the dear hand will never smooth again. Remember me, then, only as I used to be; my heart is the same always; in it the long, long years have wrought no change.