From the Housetops

by George Barr McCutcheon

"I should starve, old fellow. You forget that I am a poor man."

"Rats! You've got twenty-five thousand dollars a year, if you'll only be sensible. There isn't another man in the United States who would be as finicky about it as you are, no matter how full of ideals and principles he may be stuffed."

Thorpe looked up suddenly. His jaw was set hard and firm once more. "Don't you know what people would say about me if I were to operate and the patient died?—as some of them do, you know. They would say that I did it deliberately. I couldn't afford to lose in a single instance, Simmy. I couldn't take the chance that other surgeons are compelled to take in a great many cases. One failure would be sufficient. One—"

"See here, you've just got to look at things squarely, Braden. You owe something to your grandfather if not to yourself. He left all that money for a certain, definite purpose. You can't chuck it. You've got to come to taw. You say that he took this means of leaving the money to you, that the trust thing is all piffle, and all that sort of thing. Well, suppose that it is true, what kind of a fool would you be to turn up your nose at six million dollars? There are all kinds of ways of looking at it. In the first place, he didn't leave it to you outright. It is a trust, or a foundation, and it has a definite end in view. You are the sole trustee, that's the point on which you elect to stick. You are to be allowed to handle this vast fortune as your judgment dictates, as a trustee, mind you. You forget that he fixed your real position rather clearly when he stipulated that you were to have a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and fees as a trustee. That doesn't look as though he left it to you without strings, does it?"

For an hour they argued the great question. Simmy did not pretend that he accepted Braden's theories; in fact, he pronounced them shocking. Still, he contended, that was neither here nor there. Braden believed in them, and it wasn't any affair of his, after all.

"I don't believe it is right for man to try to do God's work," said he, in explaining his objections. "But it doesn't matter what I think about it, old chap, so don't mind me."

"Can't you understand, Simmy, that I advocate a simple, direct means of relieving the—"

"Sure, I understand," broke in Simmy agreeably.

"Does God send the soldiers into battle, does he send the condemned man to the gallows? Man does that, doesn't he? If it is God's work to drop a small child into a boiling vat by accident, and if He fails to kill that child at once, why shouldn't it be the work of man to complete the job as quickly as possible? We shoot down the soldiers. Is that God's work? We hang the murderer. Is that God's work? Emperors and kings conduct their wars in the name of God and thousands of God's creatures go down to death. Do you believe that God approves of this slaughter of the strong and hardy? God doesn't send the man to the gallows nor the soldier to the fighting line. Man does that, and he does it because he has the power to do it, and he lives serene in the consolation that the great, good God will not hold him to account for what he has done. We legalise the killing of the strong; but not for humane reasons. Why shouldn't we legalise the killing of the weak for humane reasons? It may interest you to know, Simmy, that we men have more merciful ways of ending life than God Himself directs. Why prolong life when it means agony that cannot be ended except by the death that so certainly waits a few days or weeks beyond—"

"How can you be sure that a man is going to die? Doctors very frequently say that a person has no chance whatever, and then the fellow fools 'em and gets well."