bookssland.com Ā» Other Ā» Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis (books suggested by bill gates .txt) šŸ“—

Book online Ā«Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis (books suggested by bill gates .txt) šŸ“—Ā». Author Sinclair Lewis



1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 161
Go to page:
yearā ā€”much as United States Senator! Set a high goal. Donā€™t let things slide. Get training. Go college before go medical school. Study. Chemistry. Latin. Knowledge! Iā€™m plug docā ā€”got chick nor childā ā€”nobodyā ā€”old drunk. But youā ā€”leadinā€™ physician. Make five thousand dollars year.

ā€œMurray womanā€™s got endocarditis. Not thing I can do for her. Wants somebody hold her hand. Roadā€™s damn disgrace. Culvertā€™s out, beyond the grove. ā€™Sgrace.

ā€œEndocarditis andā ā€”

ā€œTraining, thatā€™s what you got tā€™ get. Fundamentals. Know chemistry. Biology. I nevā€™ did. Mrs. Reverend Jones thinks sheā€™s got gastric ulcer. Wants to go city for operation. Ulcer, hell! She and the Reverend both eat too much.

ā€œWhy they donā€™t repair that culvertā ā€”And donā€™t be a booze-hoister like me, either. And get your basic science. Iā€™ll splain.ā€

The boy, normal village youngster though he was, given to stoning cats and to playing pom-pom-pullaway, gained something of the intoxication of treasure-hunting as the Doc struggled to convey his vision of the pride of learning, the universality of biology, the triumphant exactness of chemistry. A fat old man and dirty and unvirtuous was the Doc; his grammar was doubtful, his vocabulary alarming, and his references to his rival, good Dr. Needham, were scandalous; yet he invoked in Martin a vision of making chemicals explode with much noise and stink and of seeing animalcules that no boy in Elk Mills had ever beheld.

The Docā€™s voice was thickening; he was sunk in his chair, blurry of eye and lax of mouth. Martin begged him to go to bed, but the Doc insisted:

ā€œDonā€™t need nap. No. Now you lissen. You donā€™t appreciate butā ā€”Old man now. Giving you all Iā€™ve learned. Show you collection. Only museum in whole county. Scientifā€™ pioneer.ā€

A hundred times had Martin obediently looked at the specimens in the brown, crackly-varnished bookcase: the beetles and chunks of mica; the embryo of a two-headed calf, the gallstones removed from a respectable lady whom the Doc enthusiastically named to all visitors. The Doc stood before the case, waving an enormous but shaky forefinger.

ā€œLooka that butterfly. Name is Porthesia chrysorrhoea. Doc Needham couldnā€™t tell you that! He donā€™t know what butterflies are called! He donā€™t care if you get trained. Remember that name now?ā€ He turned on Martin. ā€œYou payinā€™ attention? You interested? Huh? Oh, the devil! Nobody wants to know about my museumā ā€”not a person. Only one in county butā ā€”Iā€™m an old failure.ā€

Martin asserted, ā€œHonest, itā€™s slick!ā€

ā€œLook here! Look here! See that? In the bottle? Itā€™s an appendix. First one ever took out ā€™round here. I did it! Old Doc Vickerson, he did the first ā€™pendectomy in this neck of the woods, you bet! And first museum. It ainā€™tā ā€”so bigā ā€”but itā€™s start. I havenā€™t put away money like Doc Needham, but I started first cā€™lectionā ā€”I started it!ā€

He collapsed in a chair, groaning, ā€œYouā€™re right. Got to sleep. All in.ā€ But as Martin helped him to his feet he broke away, scrabbled about on his desk, and looked back doubtfully. ā€œWant to give you somethingā ā€”start your training. And remember the old man. Will anybody remember the old man?ā€

He was holding out the beloved magnifying glass which for years he had used in botanizing. He watched Martin slip the lens into his pocket, he sighed, he struggled for something else to say, and silently he lumbered into his bedroom.

II I

The state of Winnemac is bounded by Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and like them it is half Eastern, half Midwestern. There is a feeling of New England in its brick and sycamore villages, its stable industries, and a tradition which goes back to the Revolutionary War. Zenith, the largest city in the state, was founded in 1792. But Winnemac is Midwestern in its fields of corn and wheat, its red barns and silos, and, despite the immense antiquity of Zenith, many counties were not settled till 1860.

The University of Winnemac is at Mohalis, fifteen miles from Zenith. There are twelve thousand students; beside this prodigy Oxford is a tiny theological school and Harvard a select college for young gentlemen. The University has a baseball field under glass; its buildings are measured by the mile; it hires hundreds of young Doctors of Philosophy to give rapid instruction in Sanskrit, navigation, accountancy, spectacle-fitting, sanitary engineering, ProvenƧal poetry, tariff schedules, rutabaga-growing, motorcar designing, the history of Voronezh, the style of Matthew Arnold, the diagnosis of myohypertrophia kymoparalytica, and department-store advertising. Its president is the best money-raiser and the best after-dinner speaker in the United States; and Winnemac was the first school in the world to conduct its extension courses by radio.

It is not a snobbish rich-manā€™s college, devoted to leisurely nonsense. It is the property of the people of the state, and what they wantā ā€”or what they are told they wantā ā€”is a mill to turn out men and women who will lead moral lives, play bridge, drive good cars, be enterprising in business, and occasionally mention books, though they are not expected to have time to read them. It is a Ford Motor Factory, and if its products rattle a little, they are beautifully standardized, with perfectly interchangeable parts. Hourly the University of Winnemac grows in numbers and influence, and by 1950 one may expect it to have created an entirely new world-civilization, a civilization larger and brisker and purer.

II

In 1904, when Martin Arrowsmith was an Arts and Science Junior preparing for medical school, Winnemac had but five thousand students yet it was already brisk.

Martin was twenty-one. He still seemed pale, in contrast to his black smooth hair, but he was a respectable runner, a fair basketball center, and a savage hockey-player. The co-eds murmured that he ā€œlooked so romantic,ā€ but as this was before the invention of sex and the era of petting-parties, they merely talked about him at a distance, and he did not know that he could have been a hero of amours. For all his stubbornness he was shy. He was not entirely ignorant of caresses but he did

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... 161
Go to page:

Free e-book Ā«Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis (books suggested by bill gates .txt) šŸ“—Ā» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment