OLD DOC
By OPIE READ
(1852—). An American journalist, noted for his work as Editor of The Arkansas Traveller. Among his books, most of which concern life in Arkansas, are: Len Gansett; My Young Master; An Arkansas Planter; Up Terrapin River; A Kentucky Colonel; On the Suwanee River; Miss Polly Lop; The Captain's Romance; The Jucklins.
The character sketch is interesting for the same reason that gossip is interesting: we notice our neighbors and are curious to learn more about them. We are all sharp observers of our fellows. We see their oddities, their cranks, and their amusing habits just as clearly as we see their virtues. We laugh and we admire—in much the same spirit that a mother laughs at her baby, however much she loves it.
Character sketches have been popular for many centuries. Chaucer's Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is really a series of shrewdly-true character sketches keenly tipped with humor, and full of genuine respect for goodness. Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613) wrote a number of strongly pointed sketches of character. A hundred years later Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele conceived the whimsical, good-hearted Sir Roger de Coverley and his company of associates.
Out of such work grew not only the character sketch of to-day but also material for the short story and the novel.
Mr. Read's presentation of the country doctor of the Old South is a striking example of the character sketch. Following the example set by Addison in 1711 Mr. Read first describes the character and then tells an anecdote that reveals personality. The entire sketch is redolent with good-humor.
His house was old, with cedar-trees about it, a big yard, and in the corner a small office. In this professional hut there was only one window, the glass of which was dim with dust blown from the road. In the gentle breeze the lilacs and the roses swopped their perfume, while the guinea-hen arose from her cool nest, dug beneath the dahlias, to chase a katydid along the fence, and then with raucous cry to shatter the silence. The furnishings of the office were less than modest. In one corner a swayed bed threatened to fall, in another a wash-stand stood epileptic on three legs. Nailed against the wall was a protruding cabinet, giving off sick-room memories. The village druggist, compounder of the essences of strange and peculiar “yarbs,” might have bitter and pungent medicines, but Old Doc, himself an extractor of wild juices, had discovered the secret of the swamp. To go into his office and to come forth with no sign was a confession of the loss of smell. Sheep-shearing fills the nostrils with woolly dullness, but sheep-shearers could scent Old Doc as he drove along the road.
In every country the rural doctor is a natural sprout from the soil. His profession is almost as old as the daybreak of time. He bled the ancient Egyptian, blistered the knight of the Middle Ages, and poisoned the arrow of the Iroquois. He has been preserved in fiction, pickled in the drama, spiced in romance, and peppered in satire; but nowhere was he so pronounced a character as in America, in the South. He knew politics, but was not a politician. He looked upon man as a machinist viewing an engine, but was not an atheist. He cautioned health and flattered sickness. He listened with more patience to an old woman harping on her trouble than to a man in his prime relating his experience. His books were few, and the only medical journal found in his office was a sample copy. When his gathered lore failed him, he was wise in silence. To confess to any sort of ignorance would have crippled his trade. It was an art to keep loose things from rattling in his head when he shook it, and of this art he was a perfect master. In raiment he was not over-adorned, but near him you felt that you were in the presence of clothes. Philosophy's trousers might bag at the knees, theology's black vestment might be shy a button, art might wear a burr entangled in its tresses, and even the majesty of the law might go forth in slippers gnawed by a playful puppy; but old doc's “duds,” strong as they were in nostril penetration, must hug the image of neatness. He was usually four years behind the city's fashion, but this was shrewdly studied, for to dress too much after the manner of the flowing present would have branded him a foppish follower. The men might carp at his clean shirt every day, but it won favor with the women; and while robust medicine may steal secret delight from seeing two maul-fisted men punch each other in a ring, it must openly profess a preference for the scandals that shock society.
At no place along the numerous roads traversed by old doc was there a sign-post with a finger pointing toward the attainment of an ultimate ambition. No senate house, no woolsack of greatness, waited for him. The chill of foul weather was his most natural atmosphere; and should the dark night turn from rain to sleet, it was then that he heard a knock and a “Hello!” at his door. Down through the miry bottom-land and up the flint hillside flashed the light of his gig-lamp, striking responsive shine from the eye of the fascinated wolf. The farther he had to travel, the less likely was he to collect his bill. Usury might sell the widow's cow, for no one expected business to have a daintiness of touch; but if Doc sued for his fee, he was met even by the court with a sour look.