Life Unveiled, by a Child of the Drumlins — Chapter 8 Part II - The Medic

Copying several addresses from the bulletin board, we trudged out of the big building, with our satchels and lunch-boxes in our hands.

A fine rain was falling; it seemed later in the day than it was.

We were adrift in that great city.

Deciding to look up none of the addresses till the morrow, we started for the Young Women’s Christian Association, of which we had heard before leaving home.

Belle thought that when we got out to Washington Street she could get her bearings and easily find Warrenton Street, where the Association building was.

But on reaching there, she could not be sure whether to go up or down;

so we plodded on, not knowing whether we were going toward or away from our hoped-for destination.

Everyone we accosted was kind, but no one knew where Warrenton Street was.

Car after car would go by, but we did not know what one to take.

The only policemen we could discover were on the cars.

We laughed miserably as we thought of our parents’ injunctions to “ask a policeman.

” The Boston policemen didn’t like walking in the rain.

On and on we trudged, our arms aching from the satchels, and, much of the way, harrowed by uncertainty.

Finally someone told us we were nearing the street in which the Y. W.

C. A.

was located.

How good it was to spy that sign, and how like a shelter the huge building was as it loomed before us!

The street was narrow and dismal (it was even on a sunshiny day) and on that dark day looked especially unpromising, but our goal was reached; our strength and courage were well-nigh spent.

Shelter, refuge--what meaning in those words, and how soon we had learned the need of them in this big, strange, rainy Boston!

The girl who answered the door-bell, a slow-moving, stolid creature, replying to our request to see the Superintendent, said that she was at dinner; that we would have to wait.

It was then after two in the afternoon.

Of course we would wait; we asked for nothing better.

We volunteered that we had come to engage room and board.

“I’m sorry, but the house is full,” she said.

Belle dropped into a chair.

She had gone through so much!

Her vaunted courage was proving a broken reed.

I stood there, desperate, not knowing which way to turn.

On the way thither it had gradually dawned upon me that Belle’s courage was rapidly oozing.

I had had to exchange satchels with her and carry her heavier one (though she was taller and larger than I), as she had declared she could carry it no farther.

It was a novel position for me--to be the leader; but we tacitly changed places during that long rainy walk.

I looked at Belle, a forlorn heap in the chair.

I saw that stolid girl, waiting for us to go, since she had told us there was no room--to go out in the rain, no shelter in view!

I felt the humiliation of our position before the girl who was showing impatience for us to start, but summoned enough spunk to say, “Please tell the Superintendent we would like to see her when she is at liberty.

” Leaving us with the parting shot that “Every room in the house is taken,” she went away.

Bursting into tears, Belle declared she would go home on the morrow;

she didn’t want to study medicine--had never wanted to--only did it to please her people--didn’t like Boston--hated Dr. Matson, and didn’t want to be a woman doctor any way; she would go back and teach school.

Her outburst astonished me.

Pitying her, and agreeing with her in part, her giving way put me on my mettle.

So, having sense enough to know that we were both worn from the physical and emotional strain, and that, dark as things were, they seemed darker because of our exhaustion, I sat down and, opening our lunch-box, fairly forced the food into Belle’s mouth, and devoured some myself.

The messenger girl passed the door several times, peering in curiously; she looked as though she were going to tell us we must not eat in the waiting room, but passed on.

It must have been an unaccustomed sight to her.

I

myself felt the unfitness of it all, but did not care; we were nearly famished; it was the desperation of self-preservation.

As we ate and talked, Belle drooped less, and we soon got interested in the coming and going past the door.

Happy, laughing girls passed and re-passed, running to catch the elevator, peeping in at us with half-veiled curiosity, and moving on.

How envious we felt at seeing them greet one another--everybody knew everybody else in Boston, except these two miserable girls who knew only each other.

We kept looking at the clock; we tried to jest, wondering what that woman had for dinner that kept her so long.

We must have sat there an hour, expectant, anxious.

The messenger girl seemed to have disappeared for good.

At last, desperate, I started out down the strange corridor, and there met her: “Hasn’t the Superintendent finished her dinner _yet_?

” I queried.

“Oh, my, yes, an hour ago--I forgot to tell her you were waiting.

” I must have looked my wrath, for she went off in short order, returning soon with a tall, stern, handsome woman, the Superintendent’s assistant.

This lady heard our tale calmly, looked at us critically, and told us the house was full; she was sorry, but she would give us addresses of boarding-places near by.

Belle declared she could not stir another step to look for a place.

At this vehemence the calm lady lifted her eyebrows, but said nothing.

I must have said in my most supplicating tones, “Can’t you make room for us some way, just for to-night--we are _so_ tired,” for she deliberated, then said, “We will go and see what Miss Dillingham has to suggest.

” And she ushered us up to the office of the Superintendent.

Dark and gloomy every corner of that building had seemed that rainy afternoon, but as the door opened, a cheerful fire, and an atmosphere of warmth and ease and home enveloped us.

Sitting at a desk was a stout, red-cheeked, red-nosed woman with bright gray eyes.

She looked up, nodding a greeting to us, and listened to her assistant’s explanations.

“I’ve told them I don’t see how we can accommodate them,” the younger woman said, not unkindly but dispassionately.

I remember admiring her stately grace as she moved about the room, but feeling from the way she closed her lips that we had little to hope from her.

“Why have you come to Boston?

” queried the Superintendent as she rose and came toward us.

“We came to study medicine,” I said, and tried to explain further, when my voice gave way, and I lost the self-control I had been maintaining all day against such odds.

I turned to Belle and she took up the tale, but broke down, too.

Then the good soul gathered us both in her arms, held us close to her broad bosom and let us sob out the grief that refused to be suppressed any longer.

Then, conferring with her assistant, after some directions about changes, she rang for the bell-girl and told her to have room 60 prepared for us at once; they would manage to keep us that night, and to-morrow would help us find a boarding-place.

She then told us the supper hour, and the time for evening prayers, and, advising us to get a nap, said we would feel like new creatures by evening.

The clean little room with its two narrow beds and scanty furniture--what a haven it was!

Exploring our surroundings, and removing the dust of travel, we lay ourselves down in our little white beds and quickly fell into a sound if not untroubled sleep.

We must have slept several hours.

The first thing I was aware of was the singing of a hymn in a distant part of the building.

It was dark.

I

wondered where I was.

Low sobs from the other side of the room brought me to my senses.

The singing made me homesick, my throat ached, my own tears started, and creeping out of bed I went over to Belle, and there we sobbed away in our misery, while those young voices on the floor above sang: “Jesus, Saviour, pilot me Over Life’s tempestuous sea;

Unknown waves before me roll, Hiding rock and treacherous shoal.

Wondrous Sovereign of the sea, Jesus, Saviour, pilot me.

” Our cry out, we felt better.

Belle experimented with the gas, finally succeeding in lighting it.

(It was a week or more before I felt safe in doing it--I disliked that sudden noise just as it ignited, it made me jump; and I always felt doubtful whether I had turned it off, too, and had to call Belle to come and see if it was leaking.

) As the supper hour was long past, we ate the remnants of our lunch, looked out on the strange street with the hurrying passers-by, explored the bath-room, and, after much investigation about the fixtures, took our first baths in a bath-tub, and went to bed for the night, in almost a cheerful frame of mind.

We talked long in the darkness, getting better acquainted than we had in all the years of school together.

Never especially congenial, as children contending together for the supremacy of the things we espoused--Republicanism and Methodism _versus_ Democracy and the Baptist faith--over these in former years we had waged war; but there in the darkness we discussed earnestly and amicably our individual faiths (or doubts, now, in my case), our hopes, our ideals, coming to a better understanding than ever before.

In the morning the sun shone gloriously.

In the great dining room a hundred or more girls were seated.

No doubt we showed by our awkwardness that it was our first venture into city life; but we had a grip on ourselves, and felt equal to the day’s experiences; they couldn’t possibly be worse than yesterday’s and, I felt exultantly, we had lived through them.

As she left the dining room the Superintendent nodded kindly to us, later sending for us to come to the office.

There she told us they would manage to keep us a week, or until a room could be secured for us at the branch Association on Berkeley Street, a newer and better building, and much nearer the College.

This was indeed good news, and we started off for College with almost pleasurable anticipations-so bright was the sun, so crisp the October air, and so eager were we to see what was in store for us.

I remember well those first walks to and from the College; our perceptions alert, everything so different from what we were accustomed to; the ordinary street scenes, the ways of the people, the peculiar pronunciation of the passers-by, even of the newsboys--everything was food for wonder, amusement, or ridicule to the two village girls: Why didn’t they build their side-walks on a level, instead of making the pedestrian step down at every crossing, and then up again?

Gradually we learned that these marked the ends of blocks.

We did not like the houses built all together, they looked queer and dismal.

We marvelled at the huge dray-horses, and laughed at the queer herdics tumbling along; we puzzled over the street cries; we looked with interest at the “Tech” boys as we passed them on their way to the Institute of Technology, and felt a community of interest with them, as well as with the Conservatory students, as, crossing a little park, we saw them file into the New England Conservatory of Music.

On nearing the College we saw the medical students coming briskly from all directions, nearly all of them carrying what seemed to be part and parcel of their equipment--the ubiquitous brown-leather Boston bag.

A thrill of expectancy went through me as, turning into Concord Street, we felt ourselves a part of this life.

The building looked quite familiar on seeing it for the second time, and despite our disheartening experiences of the previous day, I went up the steps eagerly, in half-suppressed excitement.

It was some days before Belle ceased her threats of going home, and she was always more or less of a malcontent.

I am sorry to say we were not very harmonious roommates, though we never openly quarrelled.

If I received higher marks than she did in our trial “exams,” she usually made herself and me wretched; if I met with special cordiality and friendliness, her ill-natured comments often took the savour out of what would have been pleasant experiences for me.

I frequently found myself guiltily trying to conceal things of which I would ordinarily have been frankly glad, just to save a scene.

There’s no denying that she was inordinately jealous, and it was a temperament I had never come in contact with before.

Though seldom airing our differences, there was, with me, I know, a good deal of unexpressed irritation.

Sometimes I would go in the clothes-press and shake my fist at her wrapper, a garment which seemed peculiarly to personify her.

This relieved me a little.

New as it all was, I felt at home in Boston at the start, and was disposed to like everything.

Happy and interested in my work, I also revelled in the good general library at the Y. W.

C. A.

, in the churches, the lectures, the Art Museum, the symphony concerts, the quaint old parts of Boston, the Common, the Public Gardens--it was all life, and more abundant than I had dreamed would be mine.

And people liked me.

One of my weaknesses in later years--this liking so to be liked--then it was merely an innocent pleasure to feel, as I usually instinctively felt, that I was generally liked.

As a class we were on friendly terms; the ages ranged from girls in their ’teens to women of perhaps thirty-five; the men were mostly in the twenties; a few were older.

Two of the young men were always talking to Belle, between lectures, against women studying medicine.

She would rehearse their arguments to me, especially toward the close of the year, telling how they laboured with her to give up medicine;

that it unsexed women; that they didn’t care a rap about most of the women in the class, but hated to see “nice girls” like her and me keep on with the course, and at last turn out like Dr. Matson and some of the masculine senior girls.

I thought then, and still think, that there is nothing in the study or practice of medicine that need make a woman less womanly.

It ought rather to make her more so.

By reason of being a woman she may lack some qualities that go to make the ideal physician, but, if so, this limits her as a physician; it need not detract from her qualities as a woman.

But few women, and by no means all men, physicians, possess the mechanical skill and other qualities that make a good surgeon; but the general practice of medicine, I think, is not beyond the mastery of many a woman’s mind and strength.

If a capable woman, with a well-trained mind, and with self-mastery, engages in the study and practice of medicine and fails, it is, I believe, rather because stronger interests attract her than because she cannot master it.

And as for masculinity as seen in women physicians, those same women, as I used to point out to Belle, were masculine before they began to study medicine--would have been so in any walk in life.

We occasionally saw Dr. Anna Shaw around the College--she had graduated there some years before--distinctly the masculine type.

Many of the women of the faculty were charmingly feminine; and, better still, some that were not so charming were strong and womanly, and commanded the respect of their _confrères_, both as women and as physicians.

It was months before either Belle or I ceased to shudder when we saw those steely eyes of “Dr. Caroline” fastened upon us.

As she was professor in anatomy, we saw much of her the first year.

Her lectures were thorough, painstaking, and interesting.

But, though excellent as an instructor, she scared the life out of us at quizzes.

She would call each student by name, then pause--time for every eye to fasten upon one--then a searching look into one’s eyes, and the question was fired.

I never answered satisfactorily, even when I knew well the answer, she disconcerted me so, making me tremble to the very marrow of my bones--those bones she knew so well!

She had a system of marking at quizzes, giving each student a plus mark for correct answers, ten of which would count one on his final examination.

The boys called her “Our Caddie.

” We even got so that we did ourselves.

The incongruity of the “_i-e_” name, applied to HER, particularly pleased Belle and me.

But we learned to respect her, as did all the students.

It was rumoured that she never treated any student with geniality till he had passed her chair in anatomy; it was also rumoured that it was one of the hardest things to pass that chair.

Occasionally we caught sight of her friendly manner to some of the upper-class students, and fairly revelled in her rare smiles when we saw them bestowed on some lucky senior.

She was transformed when she smiled.

And in spite of her mannish stride, and her abrupt, brusque ways, she had certain womanly traits which we rejoiced to see: she blushed exquisitely, and had pretty dimpled hands with pink finger tips--I used to note them when she passed the trays with the anatomical specimens, and her dainty way of using the towel after handling them.

I have said that she was a middle-aged woman, but I wonder if she was not younger than that: in those days I regarded every one past the twenties as middle-aged, or old.

“Dr. Caroline” instructed us that first year, in microscopy, too, and was very exacting.

I had no special aptitude for it, and was afraid of making blunders.

She was so deft, and I so awkward in preparing specimens, often breaking the fragile cover-glasses and spoiling my bits of tissue which she doled out to us as precious morsels.

How the smell of the oil of cloves which we used in the work brings up those sessions in microscopy--the students seated at the long tables “teasing” their specimens with the fine needles, and mounting and labelling the minute scraps of tissue!