The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1932-06-17

you reau ABOUT IN DOCKS came
~ to AlonZo Meierberg when he
was thirty-one, and on the up
ward plunge of a wave of success as
a young surgeon that was carrying
him to the top of his profession.
He walked out of the office of one
of his most distinguished confreres,
with his own suspicion of himself cor
federated. One of his lungs had
hole in it. tuberculosis had him. The
man who was considered the most bril-
liantly promising plastic surgeon in
the city of New York, and that meant
practically in America, was doomed.
at thirty-one, to exile. If not per-
manent exile, and most probably that,
then for period of years that was
apt to play havoc with the soaring of
his career.
Well, Meierberg was about as logical
as the average intellectual would be
under such conditions. He placed his
situation before him, so to speak
ReckOned on the alternative advantages
of remaining at his post, and dying
young and perhaps brilliantly, or go
ing off to struggle for an existence
that might not be worth the living.
With his mind, the latter alternative
won. But love of life was too strong
in this man to go down before the
mere argument of a sophisticated
brain.
In the end, Doctor Meierberg went
out to a shanty town of an altitude
and dryness necessary to his well
being, and there took Up his abode.
The wide open spaces. Gods coun-
try. Back to nature.
Cactus Post was all those. A little
smear of a town situated on the slope
of a mountain that hung between
desert and snow-caps. The sun came
up in glory over Cactus Post and went
down in magnificence. The air was
as dry, as thin-tasting, as sparkling, as
champagne and, every morning of his
life Doctor Meierberg awoke to the
incredibly lovely chipperings of birds
he did not know by name and to the
clear ringing sound of axes hurting
into the wilderness of tree boles that
lined the mountain side
Glory hung over Cactus Post. Dew
lit mornings. Peace-drenched noon
days. Long, somnolent afternoons
filed with what the doctor knew was
sedative balm for his wounded lung.
Evenings before a pine wood fire that
went deeply up into the nostrils like
the tickling elixir of a chartreuse.
Leisure for reading that never before
in all his closely packed years of strug-
joyed. Boxes of books arrived from
the East almost weekly, and were
read! Not merely placed on reading
table to be read at some future time.
But read, there and then.
The folks in Cactus Post were a
goodly enough sort, too. Simple wom-
en- and girls. Bred to the open spaces.
Fearless folk. Fine, the doctor thought.
And yet it must be admitted that as
the months marched along and then
the years, such a nostalgia began to
lay hold of the doctor that the heart
of him was almost as sore as his heal
ing lung mad been.
Years of the coyote-riddled, night
silences. The flaming sunrises usher
ing in the long, somnolent days. The
gorgeous sunsets ushering them out
Monotony.
The old days began to gnaw at him.
Closing his eyes of an evening beside
his book-stacked fireplace, the doctor
could visualize things back home The
incandescent-eyed city. Women who
were million years and three thou
sand miles alien to these husky, calico
clad ones, wrapping themselves in furs
and riding out into the spangled eve
nings. The warm, vibrant flare of
life along New Yorks Broadway Men
tai stimulant Of theaters and concerts.
pulsing note of humanity. That was
1t. Humanity. The doctor was lonesome
unto death. The wide, open spaces were
too wide. Too open. Humanity was
a charmed circle closing within it life
and love and warmth and beauty.
EocCielly, Tie HOSIdlSld was DeCOU1lnS
almost more than the doctor could
bear. And yet, he knew that, some
how, he must stick it out for another
year. He knew himself on the road
to recovery but he dared not hasten
the way along that road. Another
year, what with careful living and
right habits, would see the spot on his
lung healed. Another year!
Sometimes, during the passing of it,
the doctor feared for his sanity.
Tedium of waiting. Terrible, terrible
tedium of waiting.
Then there was his sense of deli
cacy and of actual fear of revealing
his state of mind to the people about
him. To the sweet-eyed Clarissa who
rode in twelve miles on horseback to
tend his shanty for him day by day