g people what
they knew, deep down in their hearts, to be true. It sometimes hurt at
first, but sooner or later, if the man had a spark of real manhood in
him, he came back, and gave the Doctor an abiding affection.

There were those who, though they loved him, called him intolerant. I
never could look at it that way. He _did_ have the only kind of
intolerance which is at all tolerable, and that is the intolerance of
intolerance. He always set himself with vigour against that unreason and
lack of sympathy which are the essence of intolerance; and yet there was
a rock of conviction on many subjects behind which he could not be
driven. It was not intolerance: it was with him a reasoned certainty of
belief. He had a phrase to express that not uncommon state of mind in
this age particularly, which is politely willing to yield its foothold
within this universe to almost any reasoner who suggests some other
universe, however shadowy, to stand upon. He called it a "mush of
concession." He might have been wrong in his convictions, but he, at
least, never floundered in a "mush of concession." I heard him say once:

"There are some things a man can't concede, and one is, that a man who
has broken a law, like a man who has broken a leg, has got to suffer for
it."

It was only with the greatest difficulty that he could be prevailed upon
to present a bill. It was not because the community was poor, though
some of our people are poor, and it was certainly not because the Doctor
was rich and could afford such philanthropy, for, saving a rather
unproductive farm which during the last ten years of his life lay wholly
uncultivated, he was as poor as any man in the community. He simply
seemed to forget that people owed him.

It came to be a common and humorous experience for people to go to the
Doctor and say:

"Now, Doctor North, how much do I owe you? You remember you attended my
wife two years ago when the baby came--and John when he had the
diphtheria----"

"Yes, yes," said the Doctor, "I remember."

"I thought I ought to pay you."

"Well, I'll look it up when I get time."

But he wouldn't. The only way was to go to him and say:

"Doctor, I want to pay ten dollars on account."

"All right," he'd answer, and take the money.

To the credit of the community I may say with truthfulness that the
Doctor never suffered. He was even able to supply himself with the best
instruments that money could buy. To him nothing was too go