s for big work for the right man. Community water
supply--better housing, the health conditions of the ignorant foreign
folk who work the small farms. A country doctor ought to have the
missionary spirit."

"There are plenty of little men for such places."

"It takes big men. I could make our old countryside bloom like a rose if
I could put into it half the effort that I am putting into my work with
you. But it would be lean living--and I have chosen the flesh-pots."

"Don't despise yourself because you couldn't go on being poor in a big
way. You are going to be rich in a big way, and that is better."

As the days went on, however, Richard wondered if it were really better
to be rich in a big way. Sometimes the very bigness and richness
oppressed him. He found himself burdened by the splendor of the mansions
at which he made his morning calls. He hated the sleekness of the men in
livery who preceded him up the stairs, the trimness of the maids waiting
on the threshold of hushed boudoirs. Disease and death in these sumptuous
palaces seemed divorced from reality as if the palaces were stage
structures, and the people in them were actors who would presently walk
out into the wings.

It was therefore with some of the feelings which had often assailed him
when he had stepped from a dim theater out into the open air that Richard
made his way one morning to a small apartment on a down-town side street
to call on a little girl who had recently left the charity ward at
Austin's hospital. Richard had operated for appendicitis, and had found
himself much interested in the child. He had dismissed the limousine
farther up. It had seemed out of place in the shabby street.

He stopped at the florist's for a pot of pink posies and at another shop
for fruit. Laden with parcels he climbed the high stairs to the top floor
of the tenement.

The little girl and her grandmother lived together. The grandmother had a
small pension, and sewed by the day for several old customers. They thus
managed to pay expenses, but poverty pinched. Richard had from the first,
however, been impressed by their hopefulness. Neither the grandmother nor
the child seemed to look upon their lot as hard. The grandmother made
savory stews on a snug little stove and baked her own sweet loaves. Now
and then she baked a cake. Things were spotlessly clean, and there were
sunshine and fresh air. To have pitied those two would have been
superfluous.

After he had