When he wasn’t “doing housework” he was in his office, busy, not with patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers.  Then he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, although there seemed to be considerable sickness.  He heard of the other doctor riding all night.  Indeed, if one could believe all that was said, this physician never slept.  True, this man was not a graduate of medicine.  He had been a barber, and had gone directly from the razor to the scalpel; but that did not matter:  he had more calls in a week than Dr. Lively had during the winter.

“The idea of being beaten by a barber!” exclaimed Mrs. Lively.  “Why don’t you advertise yourself?”

“There’s no paper here to advertise in.”

“Then you ought to have a sign to tell people what you are—­that you were surgeon of volunteers in the army; that you had a good practice in Chicago; that you’re a graduate of two medical schools; that you write for the medical journals and for the magazines.  Why don’t you have these things put on a big sign?”

“It would be unprofessional.”

“To be professional you must sit in that miserable office and let your family starve.  Why don’t you denounce this upstart barber?—­tell people that he hasn’t a diploma—­that he doesn’t know anything—­that he couldn’t reduce that hernia and had to call on you?”

“That’s opposed to all medical ethics.”

“Medical fiddlesticks!  You’ve got to sit here like a maiden, to be wooed and won, and can’t lift a finger or speak a word for yourself.  Then there’s that woman with the broken arm—­Joe Smith’s wife.  Why shouldn’t you tell that the barber didn’t set it right, and that you had to reset it?  I saw some of Joseph Smith’s grandchildren the other day,” she continued, suddenly changing the subject, “and I must say they don’t look like the descendants of a prophet.”

For a brief period in the unfolding spring Mrs. Lively experienced a little lifting of her spirits.  The season was marvelously beautiful in Nauvoo:  one serious expense, that for fuel, was stayed, and there was the promise of increased sickness, and thus increased work for the doctor.  But this gleam was followed almost immediately by a shadow:  a scientific paper which he had despatched to a leading magazine came back to him with the line, “Well written, but too heavy for our purposes.” [1]

“I knew it was,” said Mrs. Lively.  “You write the driest, long-windedest things that ever I read.”

Dr. Lively sighed, took his hat and went out, while Mrs. Lively, after some moments of irresolution, set about getting dinner.

“Now, where’s your father?” she impatiently demanded when the dinner had been set on the table.

“Dunno,” answered Master Napoleon through the potato by which his mouth was already possessed.

The Little Corporal, as he was sometimes called by virtue of his illustrious name, was a lean-faced lad with no friendly rolls of adipose to conceal the fact that he was cramming with all his energies.