Adventures in Contentment

"Bah!" The orator caught himself, and then swept on again. "Bah!" said the Doctor. By this time the audience was really interested. The orator stopped. He knew the Doctor, and he should have known better than to say what he did. But he was very young and he knew the Doctor was opposing him. "Perhaps," he remarked sarcastically, "the Doctor can make a better speech than I can." The Doctor rose instantly, to his full height--and he was an impressive-looking man. "Perhaps," he said, "I can, and what is more, I will." He stood up on a chair and gave them a talk on Patriotism--real patriotism--the patriotism of duty done in the small concerns of life. That speech, which ended the political career of the orator, is not forgotten to-day. One thing I heard to-day about the old Doctor impressed me deeply. I have been thinking about it ever since: it illuminates his character more than anything I have heard. It is singular, too, that I should not have known the story before. I don't believe it was because it all happened so long ago; it rather remained untold out of deference to a sort of neighbourhood delicacy. I had, indeed, wondered why a man of such capacities, so many qualities of real greatness and power, should have escaped a city career. I said something to this effect to a group of men with whom I was talking this morning. I thought they exchanged glances; one said: "When he first came out of the army he'd made such a fine record as a surgeon that everyone-urged him to go to the city and practice----"