There could not be a greater contrast than existed between Rich, earnest, ambitious, still farther stimulated by the pressure of poverty, and the genial old doctor, who loved a good story and a good joke, had an abundance of this world's goods, and cared very little whether his practice increased or decreased, so that it was not intruded upon by the new lights.
Yet they were great friends. Rich loved the doctor, though soon made aware of his deficiencies, and treated him with the greatest deference; while the latter obstinately shut his eyes to the fact, often brought to view by his fellow-physician, Dr. Slaughter, that he was nourishing a most thorough-going radical and new light in his own bosom, although never obtruding his heresies; for if ever there was a boy bound to go to the root of principles, that boy was Rich.
Mrs. Clemens was a lady after the doctor's own heart. She was intelligent, refined, benevolent, and universally esteemed. Like most persons in delicate health, she was fond of having a physician round her, consulted the doctor in respect to every trifling indisposition, and was very conservative in her notions. She had one weak point, as who has not. This was a perfect passion for reading medical works and practising upon herself and the members of her family—a sentiment fostered by her delicate state of health.
This rendered it quite difficult for her to keep a hired girl, for though they liked her, and received good wages, they were not fond of the medicines she insisted upon their taking to keep them from being sick. Next to the Holy Scriptures, she reverenced Buchan's Domestic Medicine,—a copy of which, elegantly bound, lay on her table beside the Bible,—abhorred innovations in medical practice, and would much rather have died under the hands of a regular physician than been cured by a quack.
"Doctor," she said, one day, "how mysterious it seems, that my dear husband, who was a great, stout, healthy man, the very picture of health, and used to take care of me just like a baby, should be in his grave, and I still spared!"
"Invalids, ma'am, live the longest of any people in the world."
"How can that be, doctor?"
"Because they take care of themselves."
The good lady, indeed, took excellent care of herself; but she was sadly tried in regard to taking care of her son Dan.
Dan was a robust, red-cheeked boy, sound to the core, of fearless, sanguine temperament, and it was the hardest work in the world for Dan to sit on a bench and apply himself to study. Nothing but their attachment to Rich would have induced him and his sworn friends, Ned Baker and Frank Merrill, to attempt and accomplish it. But much as Dan loved his mother, he did abhor medicine, and to be coddled up.