THE COST OF LOVING
By Frederick Orin Bartlett
With a slight lift of his heavy shoulders, Dr. Schriftman brought to a close his final lecture of the year to the senior medical class. For a moment he faced these young men aggressively. With his shaggy white beard, his wiry gray hair, his bulky body, he looked more like some good-natured Santa Claus than a surgeon who was famous on two continents for his stoicism as well as his skill. It was tradition that he should say what he was about to say to each graduating class.
“Shentlemen,” he began in his rough guttural, which still retained the trace of an accent. “Shentlemen, you are about to enter a brofession which will be very jealous of you. It demands all—everything. You will be tempted by many false gods—by women, by gold. Peware! Let your work be your religion, your wife, and your reward. So you will be goot surgeons. Shentlemen, I wish you success.”
As he turned to leave the platform, he was greeted with noisy and hearty cheering.
“Raus mit der ladies!” shouted some one.
The cry was taken up with a will, but when another voice broke through with: “Hoch Schriftman!” the one hundred throats strained themselves to the utmost in a final effort to give expression to their genuine appreciation of the man.
But Schriftman, indifferent alike to their jests and plaudits, had already jammed his silk hat on the back of his head and was hurrying down stairs to where his machine waited to whisk him to the hospital.