His rare excursions to the cities gave more
pleasure to other men than to himself, however, in these later years,
and he laughingly proclaimed himself to be growing rusty and behind
the times to Dr. Ferris, who smiled indulgently, and did not take the
trouble to contradict so untrue and preposterous an assertion.
If one man had been a stayer at home; a vegetable nature, as Dr.
Leslie had gone on to say, which has no power to change its locality
or to better itself by choosing another and more adequate or
stimulating soil; the other had developed the opposite extreme of
character, being by nature a rover. From the medical school he had
entered at once upon the duties of a naval appointment, and after he
had become impatient of its routine of practice and its check upon his
freedom, he had gone, always with some sufficient and useful object,
to one far country after another. Lately he had spent an unusual
number of consecutive months in Japan, which was still unfamiliar even
to most professional travelers, and he had come back to America
enthusiastic and full of plans for many enterprises which his shrewd,
but not very persistent brain had conceived. The two old friends were
delighted to see each other, but they took this long-deferred meeting
as calmly as if they were always next-door neighbors. It was a most
interesting thing that while they led such different lives and took
such apparently antagonistic routes of progression, they were pretty
sure to arrive at the same conclusion, though it might appear
otherwise to a listener who knew them both slightly.
Pages:
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95