The Washington herald., 1914-08-07
The Doctors Driver.
By EMORY J. HAYNES.

ny De
The doctors carriage before the door, All the
neighbors look out of windows. All know "the doc
tors rig" horse carriage, and boy. So that there
can be no mistake. Some one is sick at the Johns
house. Who, how long, how bad, what's the matter ?
The doctors boy has all these questions to answer,
as the villagers, man, woman, and child, pass by.
And the boy knows. He sits there legs crossed read
ing a medical book or. possibly. THE Gunmaker Of
Moscow" and easily toss out the information as
to the Johns family without even looking up.
The position of driver for the doctor is one to be
sought after Ask any of the envious village boys.
For the horse really needs no driving. During a
dozen years TIE animal has learned the street names
and the regular families So that when the kind
just mentions the name "Mrs. Blank is SICK" off
starts the horse The boy does not have much more
to do than to remember typhoid here" newly born
here" Group here" and so on all over town. Not
that the doctor talks his with the young
man. beyond just mentioning the ailment he swings
the medicine case under the seat with hand and
himself onto the seat with the other hand But nat
uraly a boy would remembers, Brown broken leg /;
Jones, cataract; Solomon, lumbago.
Often at night the young fellow runs over in his
mind the entire village being lust getting round
or very bad today" "out and about again" There
is hardly soul in all the hamlet that the boy can
not classify, even if he must say of few, never
sick. Never went to that door" These certain few
he dislikes for they furnish business, being sell
fshy healthy year after year.
All sickness is commercialized in the mind of this
thrifty youth. Business is good or bad in town in
the inverse ratio of healthy unhealthy In
times of epidemic the other two horses are in use
and the firm has all it can do. The good cheer ap-
pears on the boys smiling face For night work he
gets extra pay 1t is an i'll wind that blows no good
And yet the young is not wholly heartless,
far from it. Does he not know that for many call
on the poor the gracious physician never charges?
Does he not mbibe somewhat Of the unusual SYM
pathy that inspires the doctor to unusual vigs with
the impoverished? Sitting longer in the carriage at
the front of the lowliest cottage Indeed he does be-
come chvalric.
He sits side by side with big heart on many
long night ride the hills. He contracts the pro-
fcssional fever of devotion to case He becomes
scientific and exuts when a mighty victory has been
won. The doctor opens his heart to him and more
than once clasps the boy on the knee, exclaiming
BY George We are going TO save her life" Then
the boy exults, remembering that the surgeon said
We" Surely that is right Did not the boy drive
the horse and wait and turn round and round in
and in due blanket the dear old doctor when
he came shivering out
What swift flights through crowded streets the
boy has put the to- The hurry call is to the
driver what the FIRE call is to the fireman. The doctor
has barely to whisper II and they are off. The boy
has all the seeming OF angelic messenger, for he
is bringing help. Help, all the human help there is
And prayers in all the air about him as he lets
her 60 He really believes that than once veri-
table angels have borne them up lest the wheels dash
against stone.
Such heroism is in the with DEATH Such
courage, skill and Workmanship Will he forget
when he got his doctor there first of all the towns
doctors when the great explosion took place? And
he saved the mare, too, though she was ready to
drop
The boy will study medicine. Already he is we'll
up in first aid, pill bandages and directions He has
doctored his younger brother several times, much
the little fellows real welfare. His mother is a
seamstress and he has helped her headaches. The
grand idea grows upon him, of making fortune,
but of binding up the broken bodies of the world.
That mystery of cure fascinates him, he says 1t
seems as if one worker together with God"
when he helps the sick to health and restores the
dying to life again.