Farm life -- Indiana -- Fiction; Indiana -- Fiction; Sex role -- Fiction
Truly he was sorry, to the bottom of his soul, but he
did not believe in being too humble. He said as much in apology as he
felt forced, and then set himself the task of calling out and parading
the level best he could think up concerning himself, or life in
general. He had tried farming, teaching, merchandise, and law before
he had decided his vocation was medicine.
On account of Robert Gray, Kate was much interested in this, but when
she asked what college he was attending, he said he was going to a
school in Chicago that was preparing to revolutionize the world of
medicine. Then he started on a hobby that he had ridden for months,
paying for the privilege, so Kate learned with surprise and no small
dismay that in a few months a man could take a course in medicine that
would enable him "to cure any ill to which the human flesh is heir," as
he expressed it, without knowing anything of surgery, or drugs, or
using either. Kate was amazed and said so at once. She
disconcertingly inquired what he would do with patients who had
sustained fractured skulls, developed cancers, or been exposed to
smallpox. But the man before her proposed to deal with none of those
disagreeable things, or their like. He was going to make fame and
fortune in the world by treating mental and muscular troubles. He was
going to be a Zonoletic Doctor. He turned teacher and spelled it for
her, because she never had heard the word. Kate looked at George Holt
long and with intense interest, while her mind was busy with new
thoughts. On her pillow that night she decided that if she were a man,
driven by a desire to heal the suffering of the world, she would be the
man who took the long exhaustive course of training that enabled him to
deal with accidents, contagions, and germ developments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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