"Bad—news!" she choked out; "no, I haven't heard any bad news—except that I'm an utterly worthless, weak-minded fool!"
"And where did you hear that?" he pursued.
"Oh, doctor—I'm so ashamed! But if you'll only give me another chance!
If you'll just not give me up for a little while yet!"
"Give you up! Now what kind of reviving fluid did Miss Lewis produce for you? What in the world are you talking about? Do you think you're any grand exception in not seeing your first operation through? Hum! Ask some of these nurses around here. Some of the doctors too, only they won't tell the truth. My first day in the dissecting room was a day of about thirty minutes. So you see you have plenty of company in your weak-mindedness."
She brightened then to the extent of looking willing to be comforted. "But it's humiliating, doctor, to think you're going to accomplish some big thing and then be absolutely overcome by a little incidental thing that doesn't happen to appeal to your senses. It's awful to have your senses get ahead of your soul like that," she laughed.
"Hum!"—Dr. Parkman had a "hum" all his own. "There's nothing unique in that experience, either. The spirit is willing, but the stomach is weak—to put it in exact terms. As a matter of fact, that's what life is made up of—having great purposes overthrown by minor inconveniences. Many a man can get hold of a great idea, but very few of them can stick by it through the things that make them uncomfortable. That's the reason most dreamers fail—they're not willing to come down out of the clouds and get to work at things that turn their stomachs!"
"Well, I'm not like that!" she flashed back at him.
"You? I know you're not. Some ancestor of yours gave you a big bump of stubbornness—for which you should look back to him with gratitude. Stubborn people aren't easily put out of the race. Now I'll tell you why I wanted you to come down here," he went on, more seriously. "I want you to see the thing just as it is. I want you to get the conception of it as a whole. I don't want you to become short-sighted. Some people look so much through the microscope that they forget how to look any other way. That's the difference between Karl and some of those fellows you're associated with now. That Willard and Lane and young Beason are the scientific kind, too abominably scientific to forge ahead. Don't lose sight of what you are doing. All these things you are doing now are simply a means to an end. You are to be one of the instruments employed—as you put it yourself one day—but make yourself such a highly-organised, responsive instrument that you're fairly alive with the idea yourself. See? That's where your real value will come in. You know,"—it was Dr. Parkman now who breathed the enthusiasm which draws one to a light out beyond obstacle and difficulty—"I'm beginning to see the thing more and more as actual fact. I caught the idea from the first, and then it seemed it simply had to be done because it was such a great thing to do, but I'm getting it more and more now just as a practical, matter-of-fact thing. And it isn't so far away,—not so very. You see, after all, Mrs. Hubers, you don't have to do it all. It would be stupid to set a race horse at a job that could be just as well accomplished by a plug. Any well-trained man can do certain things for Karl—but it's the touch of the artist—the things that make it real—it's making the blind man see—doing the impossible!—that's your work. Why, I can fairly see the whole thing," he went on—"Karl and you and some good assistant. He'll get both points of view then—he can't miss anything. The other fellow can give him certain technicalities you might miss—and then you'll turn in and bring it to his vision. A clear statement of facts could never make a blind man see. And then it will be your business to keep the spirit right—that's the real point, after all. Why, I can see it just as clearly as I could see that work to be done in there!"— pointing to the operating room.
It was another Ernestine now. She rose to it as the warrior to the trumpet call. He knew that the right word had been said.
"Now I don't think it will hurt you to see some of these operations," he went on, in more business like way. "Not only to help with observations for Karl, but—well, just to see it for yourself. Nothing will make this quite so real and vital to you as to see it actually breaking down human organisms, destroying life. I want you to get an eye for the thing as a whole:—see it as it is now, see the need of making it some other way. You must have more than a desire to help Karl—you must have an enthusiasm for the thing itself. You'll get so then that when you see an operation like this you won't see just some broken-down, diseased tissue that makes you feel weak-kneed, but you'll see something to get in and fight. Oh, it's a battle—so get your fighting blood up! Remember that you'll have to have enough for two. You know, what you must do for Karl is not only give him back the weapons with which to fight, but you must rouse his soldier's blood,—see what I mean?"