custom of men to take the climate as it
comes to them, freezing or sweating at the weather-man's desire.
Mountain and ocean, awninged gardens and breeze-swept deck: those
solaces are not for these. Ninety Fahrenheit it ran and over, day after
day, half of June, half of July. But in the old Dabney House Mrs.
Garland stood on by the steaming wash-tubs, and Kern fared daily to the
bunching-room at Heth's and its air like the breath of a new bake-oven,
and Vivian, the doctor, was never "on his vacation" when his sick
called, and stout Mr. Goldnagel, week on week, mopped his bald Hebraic
head and repaired while you waited, with all work strictly guaranteed.

Of these four it was the young physician who kept the busiest, for his
work never ended. Falling back from his brief appearance in the upper
world, he had been speedily swallowed again by his own environment.
Routine flattened him out as never before; the problem of life was to
find time to sleep.

For one thing, there was a mild epidemic of typhoid this summer,
breaking out in those quarters of the town where moderate conveniences
(as Mrs. Garland called them) were matters of hearsay only, and the
efficient and undermanned Health Department, fighting hard, did not have
the law to drive home orders where they would do the most good. But the
doctor of the Dabney House needed no epidemic to keep him occupied, so
acceptable was his no-bill custom--still maintained--to the unwell laity
of the vicinage. Through the dingy waiting-room, old state bedchamber,
there rolled a waxing stream, and the visiting rounds of V. Vivian,
M.D., ran long and overlong.

Had these been pay patients, carriage trade, Receipts would have soared
dizzily in these days, and handsome additions might have been made to
that Beirne residue of fifteen thousand dollars, now lying useless, not
even at three per centum, in Mr. Heth's Fourth National Bank. But here
trooped only the unworthy with unworthy troubles, not always of the
body; the poor and the sinful with their acute complaints; waiters and
day-laborers and furtive sisters in sorry finery, plumbers' helpers with
broken heads, bankrupt washerwomen, married grocer's clerks with coughs
not destined to stop. To these through the sweltering days and nights,
young Dr. Vivian ministered according to his gifts. They took his pills,
his bottles and his "treatment"; they lauded but rarely took his moral
counsel; and not a few spoke of loans....

All Jul