To make an application of all this, let us not be too hard on the quack
and the shyster. He is largely a product of our social system. Society has
placed temptations before him to get money, and he must keep up the
appearances of success at any cost of honesty and independent manhood. The
poor professional man who is a victim of that fearful disease,
failurephobia, in his weakness has become a slave to public opinion. He is
made to "tread the mill" daily in the monotonous round to and from his
office where he is serving a life sentence of solitary confinement, while
his wife sews or makes lace or gives music lessons to support the family.
I say solitary confinement advisedly, for now a professional man is even
denied the solid comfort of the old-time village doctor or lawyer who
could sit with his cronies and fellow-loafers in the shade of the tavern
elm, or around the grocer's stove, and maintain his professional standing
(or rather sitting). In the large towns and cities that will not do
to-day. If the professional man is not busy, he must _seem_ busy. A
physician changed his office to get a south front, as he felt he _must_
have sunshine, and he dared not do like Dr. Jones, get it loafing on the
streets. Not that a doctor would not enjoy spending some of his long,
lonely hours talking with his friends in the glorious sunshine, but it
would not do. People would say: "Doctor Blank must not get much to do now.
I see him loafing on the street like old Doc Jones. I guess Doctor
Newcomer has made a 'has been' of him, too."
I know a young lawyer who sat in his office for two long years without a
single case. Yet every day he passed through the street with the brisk
walk of one in a hurry to get back to pressing business. He was so busy
(?) that he had to read the paper as he walked to save time to--wait!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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