Never was there a quieter, better place to work than at Dr. Gottlieb’s,
whither I had gone after Aunt Lucretia and Eloise had left. In a short
while I had become reconciled, in my hard work, to my lot; for to live
with Dr. Gottlieb meant to work, to classify, to probe into things, and
this meant to put aside all else, even for awhile one’s heart’s trouble
for the hard mental strain of it. I remember those study nights well
and with such pleasure. I can recall the little quiet man with his
books, his abstraction, his quaint comments, the learned deductions that
fell now and then from his lips as if he were unconscious that he was
speaking. From studying the pollen of a flower he would look up
abstractedly and drawl, "_Ah, Jack; and Miss Lucretia—that most
beautiful and charming of women! Did I ever tell you that each of us
has our prototype in a plant? And how much to my mind—ah, Jack, and to
my heart, how much she resembles the beautiful red wood lily!_"
He would put down his book, and look longingly out over the hills. It
was the only foolish thing he ever did, I thought, and so I forgave him,
knowing that each of us has at least one foolish thought within us.
He always had a smile for me; often he would walk around all the evening
thinking abstractedly, or puttering among his books and plants and
geographical specimens, and then start into real work at midnight. And
I would work with him; for, besides studying my forestry, I was carrying
on some experiments, testing the various effects of fertilizers on the
soil of The Home Stretch. Dr. Gottlieb would say: "It is not the time,
it is the inspiration, Jack; catch it when it comes."
Exercising Satan daily as I did, I became as attached to the great game
fellow as did he to me. He was a singular horse, of a type entirely his
own. The harder the ride, the more difficult the feat, the stubborner,
gamer he grew. Not every horse is an individual, in fact few are; they
are horses merely. But Satan was one, almost human in his
idiosyncrasies. If he had been a man he would have been one of the
world’s leaders. There was nothing he would not do for me after he
learned to love me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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