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

When we saw her, Miss Bridgman was a tall, spare woman, perhaps not more than fifty, though she seemed much older to me than fifty seems now.

Pale (she wore blue spectacles over the blind eyes); her dark brown hair was parted over a refined face which had a non-fleshly look, very mobile, very sensitive--a quivering, changing face with the soul very near the surface; her lips were thin and very red.

Her long white hands were marvellous in their rapidity, receptivity, and expressiveness.

Mrs. Lamson talked to her by swift touches on the palm, Laura’s lightning fingers replying on her friend’s hand--a marvellous sight, those two silently communicating, by touch alone, all the complicated things which the instructor interpreted to us.

The one word which this mute woman could articulate was “doctor.

” In youth she had accidentally uttered the syllables and on being told what it sounded like, had eagerly practised until she could articulate the word.

Though intelligible, it was distressing to hear it, and I was glad when she resumed talk on her silent uncanny fingers.

“I don’t think it is nice for women to be doctors,” she said, on learning that we were medical students.

When her friend told her she ought not to say this, she inquired, “Why not, if I think so?

” They had never been able to convince her that politeness sometimes constrains us to conceal our thoughts.

She even added, “Tell them I do not think that women can be as skilful as men.

” But she soon asked us to prescribe for her eyes, explaining that the lids were sometimes sore.

It struck us as novel to be asked to prescribe for Laura Bridgman’s _eyes_.

Her friend told her we were only students, and had not yet learned to prescribe, but added, “_I_ can tell you something that will relieve them--if you will get some of the iron-water from a blacksmith and bathe them, it will help the soreness.

” “What is a blacksmith?

” asked Laura--“Is it one who colours things black?

” There she had been all her life learning far more complicated things than this, yet this familiar occupation was unknown to her!

It was a pleasure to see her teacher impart to her this information; to see the eager, childlike delight as the knowledge became her own.

We saw why this aged face gave the impression of perennial youth; why we thought her then, and still think of her, as a child; she had the freshness and curiosity of a child; every contact with her fellow-beings opened new vistas to her mind; every explanation begat other inquiries; she was tireless in her endeavours to learn.

Human strength was not equal to the avidity she continually showed.

As we were leaving she said, “Please ask them if I may touch their faces, then I shall know them _when I see them again_.

” Those white fingers twinkled over every part of my face--“the moving finger” read, and seemed to read with uncanny skill.

I was uneasy, except that it was done so delicately, done eagerly, yet lingeringly.

It was as though she were probing my soul to find what manner of being I was.

She felt my hair, my shoulders, my hands.

I cannot recall now whether she made any comments.

Then she did the same with Miss Wilkins, whose ready blush mounted while restively submitting to those searching fingers.

Laura paused and began talking to Mrs. Lamson.

The latter laughed, shook her head, replied on Laura’s fingers, seemingly arguing a point.

“What does she say?

” insisted Miss Wilkins.

“She says that you are old and, when I told her no, she insisted.

I

told her you were not old, but were older than your friend, and then she cornered me by saying, ‘Ask her the year she was born.

’ She always was obstinate under evasion.

” Miss Wilkins blushed deeper than ever, but enjoyed Laura’s ready wit, though forbearing to satisfy her curiosity as to the tell-tale year.

Though we attended strictly to business, it was not all work in those days; yet we had little time or money for amusement.

But in Boston there is much to see and learn at little cost.

The churches themselves are an education, and I was an inveterate church-goer, hearing Phillips Brooks the oftenest of any, but Minot Savage frequently, occasionally little old Cyrus Bartol (whom someone called “the moth-eaten angel”), Edward Everett Hale, James Freeman Clarke, Phillip Moxom, George Gordon, and others.

When we had been only about two weeks in Boston a Harvard “medic,” introduced by a Michigan cousin, called upon me.

He was a bright, dignified young man.

The acquaintance proved pleasant and stimulating throughout the college course.

It seemed good to have a caller in the strange city, and one who knew cousin Etta, and we were soon on the best of terms.

Suddenly I thought of Belle upstairs alone, and went for her, and we three had a lively time, “Westerners” that we were, comparing the Eastern ways with ours.

We giggled and chatted and made sport of the queer things we had encountered; mimicked the New England pronunciation, and told him about “Our Caddie”; while, in turn, he told us bits of his experience, of various places of interest, and how to get to them.

Belle was especially vivacious and entertaining that day.

But, after a little, she and he struck several points of variance, and differences that began in a jest soon became heated arguments.

They were both Baptists, but he was liberal and she strait-laced; and while at first it was fun to watch them spar, I grew uneasy as I saw Belle’s right ear reddening--her danger signal.

When she had asked him which Baptist church he attended, instead of designating it decorously, he had solemnly replied, “The church of the Holy Bean-Blowers,” referring to the four figures on its steeple with long gilt trumpets held up to their mouths.

When Belle remonstrated, he declared with mock gravity that they were assuredly blowing beans all over Boston, and everybody would have them to-morrow morning for breakfast.

On leaving, Mr. Sergeant said that Canon Farrar was to preach the next day at Trinity and that if he might he would like to call and accompany me there.

Had I been to Trinity yet?

and heard Phillips Brooks?

There would probably be a big crowd, so, if I pleased, he would call early, that we might be near the doors when they opened.

No, I--we--had not been to Trinity yet, I said, but that I--_we_--(with an inquiring glance at Belle) would be pleased to go.

(I had not the slightest idea who Canon Farrar was, but did not ask.

) Naming an early hour, and not including Belle, though I had, he took his leave.

Belle was furious, declared she would not go, but did go when the hour came the next day.

There was a big crowd waiting by the closed doors of Trinity.

Belle, being tall, was left to shift for herself in the crowd.

I remember how pleasant it was--an utterly new sensation--to be piloted and shielded and gently pushed along in that well-bred crowd by my new acquaintance.

Towering above me he smiled down indulgently as we were jostled this way and that.

Soon I was swept off my feet and packed so closely that the crowd bore me along, Mr. Sargeant near by assuring me that there was no danger; that this was only the eagerness of the Bostonians to attend church.

Presently the big doors opened; the surging mass of people carried me forward; in the vestibule I found my footing, and we were soon seated in the great, dark, holy Trinity.

We heard the English divine whose “Life of Christ” I have since read.

His voice was not big enough to fill the church.

I could not understand him, and was not at all impressed, but for other reasons the day was memorable.

I was strangely moved by the church itself.

When I go back to Boston now, one of the things I care most to do is to go down the little side street by which I approached, and come suddenly upon Trinity as I saw it that first day.

The vine on its gray walls, the doves around its tower, the very stones in its huge pile, have an inexplicable charm for me; and within--it calmed and satisfied me; it seemed a worship in itself, that dim interior whose details gradually became discernible to my unsophisticated eyes.

I question if any old-world cathedral could now have so profound an effect upon me as Trinity had on that girl fresh from village life, who had seen only the humble little churches of the home-town, or occasionally a more pretentious but commonplace church in a small city.

Those glorious stained-glass windows!

And the organ!

Church and music stirred me, if the English divine did not.

(A few years ago, one summer day, I went into Trinity and sat long in the obscurity--the solitude, the silence, and the enveloping peace were inexpressibly soothing.

I seemed again to feel the uplift that had always come on hearing Phillips Brooks.

I thought of all that had happened to me since, as a girl, I used to hear him pour out his rapid, inspired utterances.

How directly they always came to me!

Tossed with doubt as I was, I never heard him without receiving help.

For years he had been an uplifting influence in my life, and although I had never spoken to him, his death (when I was practising in U----) was a real loss to me--something precious then went out of my life.

) As we came out from Trinity that day, our new acquaintance proposed going into the Art Museum.

Acquiescing promptly, I was annoyed to find that Belle was scandalized--“The Art Museum on _Sunday_!

No, indeed!

” And she and Mr. Sargeant began sparring, he getting very sarcastic and she very angry; but we ended by going in for a short stay, though the mental atmosphere was not propitious.

It was always a welcome break in my evenings of study when the gong would signal our room and “Theresa” the bell-girl, would announce through the tube, “Miss Arnold has a gentleman caller.

” It was almost never any one but Mr. Sargeant.

Down to the big reception room I would rush, eager to meet him, and not having artifice enough to conceal it, or not caring to.

Other girls, receiving callers in the same room, would keep them waiting; and when they did come would enter with indifference and dignity, so unlike my prompt response to the signal.

But we were both “Westerners” and understood frankness, while most of the young people there were from New England.

Sometimes there would be several young men ranged around the room waiting.

As each girl would appear, she would stand poised in the door-way till she discovered her caller, then, making directly for him, would be more or less oblivious to the others throughout the evening.

We learned on entering the room to nod to the other “steady” callers, but there was seldom further interchange among us.

As it neared ten o’clock, the young men would sit with watches in hand, talking up to the last minute, when “Theresa” would sound the gong; they would then start with a rush for the door, and we would hurry to our rooms with a pleased sense of almost having transgressed the rules; for there was but little time after that signal before lights had to be out throughout the building.

We had had a funny initiation, after the first two or three weeks in Boston, when we had moved from the Association building on Warrenton Street to the one on Berkeley Street.

It was then that we came especially under the chaperonage of Miss Wilkins.

That first night, at the table assigned us, we found some bright girls whom we recognized as students of some sort, as they evidently did us, but students of what, all were unaware.

One fascinating girl, in a light, bantering manner, informed us of the rules and regulations of the place.

We liked her vivacity, her gestures, her imitative powers.

On learning that we had just come from the other building, she raised her eyes in reminiscent horror--she too, had been there.

In a serio-comic way she expatiated on the disadvantages, with an exaggeration and dramatic power that won the whole table; she declared the lights had to be out at eight-thirty; that the tea-cups were hewn out of the solid rock;

(they were the thickest cups I ever saw); and that no man’s voice had ever been heard in the sacred precincts.

She then asked us how we had liked there, for in Boston they never say “How do you like _it_?

” We told her we liked _it_ well enough, but it was too far from our work, and too noisy to study much--that there had been several elocutionists who had ranted and howled so much that we found studying almost impossible.

Her amusement at this egged Belle on; she grew vivacious in elaborating and rehearsing our tribulations on this score, becoming elated as they laughed gaily at her recital.

And when we said that if by any chance the elocutionists gave us any peace, the musicians drummed and vocalized until the last state was worse than the first, fresh gales of laughter arose.

Significant glances passed among our new acquaintances; and then the vivacious one solemnly warned us that she feared our trials had but begun; for here, she said, in addition to elocutionists and musicians who infested the place, there were night prowlers--medical students whose midnight calls disturbed the whole house.

If we heard the door-bell ring vigorously at unseemly hours we must not think it meant fire or other catastrophe--it would only be the summons of the “medics” to their nocturnal sprees.

All this was mingled with frank and rather disparaging comments about women medical students; and by unfeigned rejoicing when someone volunteered that a bunch of the “medics” had left yesterday; and that the staid spinster whom they pointed out to us at another table (our own Miss Wilkins) was the only one of the obnoxious ilk remaining.

Belle and I exchanged glances but held our peace.

But on stepping into the elevator, our table-mates with us, Miss Wilkins came also, with the matron, and there introduced us to that sober lady as her class-mates who had come over to-day from the other building, so as to be with her, and nearer the College.

Our new acquaintances, astonished at this disclosure, and a bit discomfited, soon rallied; the vivacious one declared that we were now even, since she and her room-mate were elocutionist and musician respectively, and that the others at our table belonged mostly to one or the other of those reprehensible classes.

A delightful friendship grew out of all this; especially with the two girls from Maine.

Agnes, the vivacious one, was studying elocution;

Anna, the staid, music--the one all life and vigour; the other quiet, sombre, phlegmatic.

The sprightly Agnes would amuse us by stirring up her chum--poking her in the ribs, she would say, “Anna, Anna, animation!

” and Anna would laugh and blush and rouse herself to please her whimsical friend.

They went with us on Saturday afternoons on our sight-seeing expeditions, and to lectures, concerts, and church; and in the evening, for the half-hour after supper, we usually allowed ourselves a chat in their room, or in ours, before buckling down to study.

They were curious about our work, as were we about theirs.

It was fun to hear Agnes, who attended the Brown School of Oratory, exalt it at the expense of the Emerson school; and to see her toss her head, and watch her nostrils dilate, when she argued with the Emerson girls.

Sometimes we went to their recitals.

Anna used to play for me by the hour, when I had time to listen, shyly pleased that her music pleased me; she was too susceptible to anything I said or did, and would have formed one of those extravagant friendships of which we were seeing so many in Boston, had I been so minded.

Our life at the Y. W.

C. A.

building had much in common with boarding-school life--though less restricted in many ways--a community of women, its walls seldom echoed to a man’s step or voice, except in the evening when callers came.

It sounded good to hear the deep tones of “Dan,” the janitor, when he brought trunks to the rooms, or was otherwise called up from the basement.

Even the elevator-boy was a girl.

As our medical books accumulated, we had need of book-shelves, but to buy a book-case, even the cheapest, was not to be thought of.

There were so many expenses to be met, so many fees at College for the different courses, books to get, bones to rent, chemicals and breakages to pay for, board and laundry bills and the like, that we cut down on all else as rigorously as possible.

I remember how my heart would sink at some new item of expense coming up at the College, and how I dreaded to write home about it, knowing well what a sacrifice it meant there.

But to occasional expressed misgivings of mine, that I had undertaken anything requiring such an outlay, Father would always write reassuringly: “We shall manage somehow; don’t worry.

One of these days you will be where you can earn money, and then we shall be glad you undertook it.

” How often these cheery messages came to me during those years!

One evening we sallied forth to a shoe store and bought a long, narrow pine box for ten or fifteen cents.

“Where will you have it sent?

” the man asked.

“We will take it ourselves,” we replied, much to the man’s amazement and amusement.

And Belle and I merrily carried the long box two or three blocks to our boarding-place.

People turned and looked at us;

street urchins guyed us, asking if it was our coffin; but to their jibes we answered good-humouredly--it was sport for us as well as for them.

Standing the thing up on end, and making shelves of the lid, we covered it with blue paper-cambric, and when our medical books were in it, we were as proud as any girls in Boston; and it cost us about thirty cents!

We had the diversion of gymnasium practice one evening a week, after which we would come down to our room for quizzes, sitting around in our “gym” suits, which rather embarrassed Miss Wilkins, and correspondingly tickled us.

Miss Thorndike did it, too, so she couldn’t very well criticize it openly.

Some evenings, sitting in our rooms studying, we would hear the street cry, “Swee-et cidah, five cents a glahss!

” We feared it would be frowned upon by the staid matron if we succumbed to this enticing call, but as the cries came nearer our mouths watered.

One night, deciding to risk it, seizing the hot-water pitcher and some change, down the stairs I stole, and sliding out the side door, lurked in the shadow of the building till the man and his cart came close to the curb, when, guiltily making the purchase, I stole upstairs.

Safe in the room, we had our spree, becoming as exhilarated as though it had been champagne.

Such simple pleasures--how they come back as I recall those student days!

One evening Belle and I closed our transom tight and lit a cigar which one of the men students had given me at college, daring me to smoke it.

(And for a girl to smoke in those days was--well, most unusual.

) How it smarted the lips!

I didn’t like it a bit, but smoked it to the bitter end.

And then we were scared, fearing the odour would penetrate the hall.

Quickly airing the room, we sat down with our books and our bones; and none too soon; for down the hall came the matron, sniffing and declaring she smelled cigar smoke.

We heard her high-pitched voice, heard her tapping on the doors and making the inquiry; but when she came to ours we were bending over our big books, one with a skull in her hand, the other with a long bone which was receiving close scrutiny as, in answer to her knock, we said “Come,” and looked up with feigned annoyance at the interruption.

Startled at what she saw, she made a hasty retreat, or would surely have noticed that the smell of smoke was stronger there than elsewhere.

Another escapade promised to be more serious: One Sunday afternoon while reading in our room a light flashed in our window; it came again and again.

We soon discovered, in a building about two blocks away, a young man with a hand-mirror and another with opera glasses.

We dodged back whenever they tried to use the glasses, but as the flash kept coming, we drew our shades for an instant, piled our skull and cross-bones on the window-sill, then lifted the shade.

Such antics as they went through!

They were certainly taken aback.

Feeling that we had checked them, we resumed our reading.

Soon again came the flash and, looking out, to our amazement we saw on their window-sill also a skull and cross-bones!

They were doubtless Harvard “medics.

” But just as we were elated over the discovery and the curious coincidence, we heard the matron and housekeeper’s voice as they came down the hall on an investigation tour.

“It must be in one of these rooms, right along here, either on this floor or on the next,” we heard the matron say, and her fussy little tap was heard on door after door.

When she came to ours no bones were in sight; one girl sat quietly writing a letter, the other was apparently taking a nap.

A low “Come” from the one writing, and a hand held up in warning as the head peeped in, lest the sleeping room-mate be disturbed, satisfied the guileless matron that we were innocent.

Explaining that some young ladies on that floor, or the floor above, had evidently been answering signals of some young men across the way, and that she was anxious to find out who it was, and put a stop to it, else it would bring disrepute upon our building, she left us, apologizing for the interruption.

Thus ended the flirtation between the Boston University skull and the skull from Harvard!