elching black smoke
from the factories hid the low-hanging stars and marked the seething
hell of injustice and vice and want and woe that he knew was in South
Harvey, and he held the glowing cigarette stub in his hand and laughed
when he thought of God. "Free will," says "Mr. Left" in one of his
rather hazy and unconvincing observations, "is of limited range. Man
faces two buttons. He must choose the material or the spiritual--and
when he has chosen fate plays upon his choice the grotesque variation of
human destiny. But when the cloth of life is finished, the pattern of
the passing events may be the same in either choice, riches or poverty,
misery or power, only the color of the cloth differs; in one piece,
however rich, the pattern is drab with despair, the other cloth sheens
in happiness." Which Mr. Van Dorn in later life, reading the
_Psychological Journal_, turned back to a second time, and threw
aside with a casual and unappreciative, "Oh hell," as his only comment.

CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH WE LEARN THAT LOVE IS THE LEVER THAT MOVES THE WORLD

Mrs. Nesbit tried to put the Doctor into his Sunday blacks the day of
her daughter's wedding, but he would have none of them. He appeared on
Market Street and went his rounds among the sick in his linen clothes
with his Panama hat and his pleated white shirt. He did not propose to
have the visiting princes, political and commercial, who had been
summoned to honor the occasion, find him in his suzerainty without the
insignia of his power. For it was "Old Linen Pants," not Dr. James
Nesbit, who was the boss of the northern district and a member of the
State's triumvirate. So the Doctor in the phaeton, drawn by his amiable,
motherly, sorrel mare, the Doctor, white and resplendent in a suit that
shimmered in the hot June sun, flaxed around town, from his office to
the hotel, from the hotel to the bank, from the bank to South Harvey. As
a part of the day's work he did the honors of the town, soothed the woes
of the weary, healed the sick, closed a dying man's eyes, held a
mother's hands away from death as she brought life into the world, made
a governor, paid his overdue note, got a laborer work, gave a lift to a
fallen woman, made two casual purchases: a councilman and a new silk
vest, with cash in hand; lent a drunkard's wife the money for a sack of
flour, showed three Maryland Satterthwaites where to fish for bass in
the Wahoo, took four Schenectady Van Dorns out to lu