ON DOCTORS.
"You're not looking well," said the staff of The Muddleton Weekly Gazette sympathetically.
"No, Sir. Can't sleep, Sir. Haven't done for days till last night. I went off beautiful quite early, and then the new nurse come and woke me to give me my sleeping draught. That finished it for the night. Strange thing, sleep. There's no sense about it. Take Bill Hawkins now, a pal of mine in B Company. He was hit and took to hospital. Not serious at all. 'Me for a rest cure,' he says. But he was in that hospital for weeks and weeks, getting worse and worse; he couldn't sleep a wink. The more they drugged him, and the more sheep he counted, the more wide-awake he was. The doctors got angry and called him an obstinate case. He said it wasn't poisons but noise he needed, so they fetched an orderly and set him banging one of them frying-pan baths with a ram-rod. In five minutes Bill falls asleep as peaceful as a lamb, and the orderly, being tired, stops. Up leaps Bill, wide awake as ever, asking what's wrong. Naturally they couldn't bang a bath for him all night every night, and the house surgeon was just thinking about getting ready a slab in the mortuary, when Bill's brother, an engine-driver, comes along. He took Bill to his box just outside Charing Cross station and made up a bed for him there. Bill slept for three days solid and was about again in a week."
"Very fortunate," murmured the Gazette.
"So that time, you see, the doctors was done. But that don't often happen. There was a doctor I knew out there, name of Gordon. Young fellow he was, too, and very keen; seemed to think the War was started specially to give him surgical practice, and he loved his lancets more than his mother. He used to welcome cases with open arms, so to speak, do his very best to heal 'em quick, and weep when he succeeded. Well, he happened to be in our trench one day, showing our Sub a new case of knives, when Charlie Black was carried in on a stretcher in an awful mess.
"'I must operate at once to save your life,' he says.
"Charlie smiled as best he could and said he was agreeable.
"'But there's no anæsthetic here,' he says, 'and I can't do it without. Couldn't you do a faint for me?'
"Charlie says he's sorry, but he's never practised fetching a faint at will, like a woman can.
"'Well, then,' he says, 'you'll have to be stunned.' And he fetches a small sandbag and gives it to the stretcher-bearer.
"'Chap here,' he explains to Charlie, 'will count up slowly, and when he gets to fifty he'll hit you on the head with the sandbag and knock you out.'
"Charlie grins, and the stretcher-bearer begins to count. When he gets to ten he rolls up his sleeves; when he gets to twenty he takes a good grip of the sandbag; at thirty he rolls his eyes and sticks out his jaw; at forty, he lifts the bag over his shoulder and draws one foot back, Charlie watching him all the time. 'For-ty-six,' he says slowly, 'for-ty seven, for-ty-eight, for-ty-nine,' and then——"
"You're not going to tell me that he really——"
"No, he didn't," said Truthful James. "Charlie fainted."
"That was their intention, I presume?"
"Your presumption is correct, Sir. The doctor finished the job before Charlie come to again. Smart, wasn't it?"
"Very smart indeed."
"But that's nothing. Nothing at all to what he could do. He once cut a fellow open, took out his liver, extracted twenty-three shrapnel bullets from it, bounced it on the floor to see it was all right, and put it back, all inside of three minutes. And the fellow what owns the liver hasn't had a to-morrow morning head-ache once since."
"He must be a very clever doctor," suggested the other, to fill in a pause.
"Talking of doctors," James went on, "reminds me of a man I saw out there who wasn't a doctor, leastways not one of ours. We was in the fire-trenches one night when a voice hails us from the other side of the entanglements. After the usual questions we brings him over the parapet, and he explains to our Sub that he's been in front attending to some wounded men in a listening post what was blown up. All perfectly correct and proper; gives his name and rank, too, and is wearing an R.A.M.C. uniform—rank, Captain. As he passes me on his way to the Sub's dug-out I happens to catch sight of his face, and it give me quite a shock. I was took ill immediate. I manages to stagger to the dug-out, and I mutters hoarsely, 'Sir, I'm sick. I think I'm going to die.'
"'Sick?' says the Sub. 'You don't look sick.'
"'I'm sorry, Sir,' I says.
"'Well,' says he, turning to the other man, 'the Captain here will soon put you right.'
"'Certainly,' says the Doc very sharp. 'Where do you feel pain—stomach, heart, head?'
"'No, Sir,' says I, 'I got a nawful pain in me inn'erds.'
"'What did you say?' he asks.
"'In me inn'erds, Sir,' I says, 'spreading from me gizzard to me probossis,' them being the only out-of-the-way words I could think of off-hand.
"'H'm,' says he, pretending to understand perfectly, 'it is probably nothing serious. You must diet yourself; take nothing but light food and——'
"Here the Sub interrupts him, thinking there's something mighty queer about a doctor what is so ready to prescribe diet for a probossis, and asks him a lot more questions. Of course the beer was in the sawdust then, and very soon a guard was called up to take our German Captain Doctor Spy away to a safe place.
"It was lucky I knew his face. Before perfidjus Albion forced this war on the poor Kayser I'd seen him often in London. He was boss of a firm above the place where I worked, and he used to order his Huns about in their own language, and chuck his empty lager bottles out of his window into our yard. I'm glad I got my own back for that."
"Jim," cried an orderly, "you're wanted for your dressing."
James rose languidly. "That means na-poo, then, Sir," he said.
"Na-poo?" echoed the Gazette.
"Where's your learning, Sir?" asked James. "That's French for 'no more.'"
"I hope your dressing will not be painful," ventured the other.
"How would you like to have a probe rammed through your hand twice a day?" demanded James with a smile. "But it's all part of the game. Comforts for Tommy. Everyone has their own way of making us happy, not forgetting the dear lady what sent us three hundred little lavender bags, with pretty little bows on them, all sewn by herself, to keep our linen sweetly perfumed. It's nice to think that they all mean well, and I always follow the advice of the auctioneer what was trying to pass off a plated teapot as solid silver."
"What did he say?"
"Look at the bright side," answered James over his shoulder as he hurried away. "O reevwaw, Sir."
"On the night of February 29th ten thousand women marched through Unter Den London crying 'bread' and 'peace.'"
Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica.)
We missed them in the Tube.