As he stepped into the corridor, one of the young women clerks was filling in an appointment slip on the long roll that hung on a metal cylinder. This was an improved device, something like a cash-register machine, that printed off the name opposite a certain hour that was permanently printed on the slip. The hours of the office day were divided into five-minute periods, but, as two assisting physicians were constantly in attendance beside Sommers, the allotted time for each patient was about fifteen minutes. "Mrs. Winter is in No. 3," the clerk told him. "Long in No. 1, and Mr. Harrison and a Miss Frost in the reception room." So the machine ground on. Even the prescriptions were formularized to such an extent that most of them were stencilled and went by numbers. The clerk at the end of the corridor handed the patient a little card, on which was printed No. 3033, No. 3127, etc., as he circled by in the last turn of the office. There was an apothecary store on the floor below, where the patient could sit in an easy-chair and read the papers while the prescription called for by his number was being fetched by an elegant young woman. Sommers hurried through with Mrs. Winter, who was a fussy, nervous little woman from the West Side; she resented having "a young feller" thrust on her. "I knew Dr. Lindsay when he was filling prescriptions on Madison Street," she said spitefully. Sommers smiled. "That must have been a good while ago, before Chicago was a big place." "Before you was born, young man; before all the doctors who could came down here in a bunch and set up offices and asked fees enough of a body to keep 'em going for a year!" Then young Long; then one, two, three new patients, who had to have physical examinations before being admitted to Lindsay. Once or twice Lindsay sent for Sommers to assist him in a delicate matter, and Sommers hurried off, leaving his half-dressed patient to cool his heels before a radiator. After the examinations there was an odd patient or two that Lindsay had left when he had gone out to lunch with some gentlemen at the Metropolitan Club. By two o'clock Sommers got away to take a hasty luncheon in a bakery, after which he returned to a new string of cases. To-day "the rush," as the clerks called it, was greater than usual. The attendants were nervous and irritable, answered sharply and saucily, until Sommers felt that the place was intolerable. All this office practice got on his nerves. It was too "intensive." He could not keep his head and enter thoroughly into the complications of a dozen cases, when they were shoved at him pell-mell. He realized that he was falling into a routine, was giving conventional directions, relying upon the printed prescriptions and mechanical devices. All these devices were ingenious,--they would do no harm,--and they might do good, ought to do good,--if the cursed human system would only come up to the standard.