The Coolidge examiner., 1932-06-17

you read about IN BOOKS came
TO Alonzo Meierberg when he
was thirty-one, and on the upward
plunge of success as a young sur
geon 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
corrobOrated. One of his lungs had
a hole in it. tuberculosis had him.
The man who was considered the
most brilliant 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 a period of years that
was apt to play havoc with the soar
ing Of his career.
Well, Meierberg was about as logi-
cal 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 bril-
liantly, or going off to struggle for
an existence that might not be worth
the living.
With his mind, the latter alterna-
tive won. But love of life was too
strong in this man to go down be-
fore the mere argument of a sophis-
ticated brain.
In the end, Doctor Meierberg went
out to a shanty town Of an alti-
tude and dryness necessary to his
well being, and there took up his
abode.
The wide open spaces. Gods
country. Back to nature.
Cactus Post was all those. A little
smear of a town situated on the
slope of a mountain that hung be-
tween desert and snow-caps. The
sun came up In glory over Cactus
Post and went down in magnifi-
cence. The air was as dry, as thin
tasting, as sparkling as champagne
and, every morning of his life Doc
tor Meierberg awoke to the incred-
IDLY lovely chippering 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.
Dewitt mornings. Peace-drenched
mondays. Long, somnolent after
moons filed with what the doctor
knew was sedative balm for his
wounded lung. Evenings before a
pine wood fire that went deeply into
the nostrils, like the tickling elixir
Of a chartreuse. Leisure for read
ing that never before in all his
closely packed years Of struggle and
endeavor had the doctor enjoyed.
Boxes of books arrived from the
East almost weekly. and were read
Not merely placed on a reading
table to be read at some future
time. But read, there and then.
The folks In Cactus Post were
goodly enough sort, too. Simple
women and girls. Bred to the open
spaces. Fearless folk. Fine, the
doctor thought.
And yet it must be admitted 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 healing lung had been.
Years of the coyote-riddled, night
silences. The flaming sunrise 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 eve
ming beside his book-stocked fire.
place, the doctor could visualize
things back home. The incandes-
cent-eyed city. Women who were
a million years and three thousand
miles alien to these husky, calico
clad ones, wrapping themselves in
furs and riding out into the span
gled evenings. The warm, vibrant
flare of life along New York's Broad
way. Mental stimulant Of theaters
and concerts. The voice Of the city.
The warm, pulsing note of human
ity. That was it. Humanity. The
doctor was lonesome unto death.
The wide, open spaces were too
wide. Too open. Humanity was a
charmed circle-closing within 1t life
and love and warmth and beauty.
Secretly, the nostalgia was becom-
ing almost more tnan the doctor
could bear. And yet, he knew that,
somehow, 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 iv-
ing 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, terri