free medical
services. "I'll fill out the paper for you with pleasure."

She read aloud the first question of the list. '"Where did you attend
lectures?'"

Her pen suspended over the paper, she looked at him inquiringly.
"Well?" she asked.

"Lekshures be blowed!" he exclaimed. "I ain't never 'tended no
lekshures!"

"Oh!" said Miss Margaret, nodding conclusively. "Well, then, let us
pass on to the next question. 'To what School of Medicine do you
belong?'"

"School?" repeated the doctor; "I went to school right here in this
here town--it's better 'n thirty years ago, a'ready."

"No," Miss Margaret explained, "that's not the question. 'To what
School of MEDICINE do you belong?' Medicine, you know," she repeated,
as though talking to a deaf person.

"Oh," said the doctor, "medicine, is it? I never have went to none," he
announced defiantly. "I studied medicine in old Doctor Johnson's office
and learnt it by practisin' it. That there's the only way to learn any
business. Do you suppose you could learn a boy carpenterin' by settin'
him down to read books on sawin' boards and a-lekshurin' him on drivin'
nails? No more can you make a doctor in no such swanged-fool way like
that there!"

"But," said Margaret, "the question means do you practise allopathy,
homeopathy, hydropathy, osteopathy,--or, for instance, eclecticism? Are
you, for example, a homeopathist?"

"Gosh!" said the doctor, looking at her admiringly, "I'm blamed if you
don't know more big words than I ever seen in a spellin'-book or heard
at a spellin'-bee! Home-o-pathy? No, sir! When I give a dose to a
patient, still, he 'most always generally finds it out, and pretty
gosh-hang quick too! When he gits a dose of my herb bitters he knows it
good enough. Be sure, I don't give babies, and so forth, doses like
them. All such I treat, still, according to home-o-pathy, and not like
that swanged fool, Doc Hess, which only last week he give a baby a dose
fitten only fur a field-hand--and HE went to college!--Oh, yes!--and
heerd lekshures too! Natural consequence, the baby up't and died fur
'em. But growed folks they need allopathy."

"Then," said Margaret, "you might be called an eclectic?"

"A eclectic?" the doctor inquiringly repeated, rubbing his nose. "To be
sure, I know in a general way what a eclectic IS, and so forth. But
what would YOU mean, anyhow, by a eclectic doctor, so to speak, heh?"

"An eclectic," Margaret explained, "is one who claims to ad