“Now, Doctor, which of those two men are you going with?”

“Why, Miss Susan,” he replied—­a favorite manner of addressing his wife, of whom he was very fond—­the note of apology in his voice showing that he knew very well what she was thinking about, “I’m going with W——.”

“I don’t think that is right,” she replied with mild emphasis.  “Mr. N——­ is as good a friend of yours as W——­, and he always pays you.”

“Now, Miss Susan,” he returned coaxingly, “N——­ can go to Pierceton and get Doctor Bodine, and W——­ can’t get any one but me.  You surely wouldn’t have him left without any one?”

What the effect of such an attitude was may be judged when it is related that there was scarcely a man, woman or child in the entire county who had not at some time or other been directly or indirectly benefited by the kindly wisdom of this Samaritan.  He was nearly everybody’s doctor, in the last extremity, either as consultant or otherwise.  Everywhere he went, by every lane and hollow that he fared, he was constantly being called into service by some one—­the well-to-do as well as by those who had nothing; and in both cases he was equally keen to give the same degree of painstaking skill, finding something in the very poor—­a humanness possibly—­which detained and fascinated him and made him a little more prone to linger at their bedsides than anywhere else.

“He was always doing it,” said his daughter, “and my mother used to worry over it.  She declared that of all things earthly, papa loved an unfortunate person; the greater the misfortune, the greater his care.”

In illustration of his easy and practically controlling attitude toward the very well-to-do, who were his patients also, let me narrate this: 

In our town was an old and very distinguished colonel, comparatively rich and very crotchety, who had won considerable honors for himself during the Civil War.  He was a figure, and very much looked up to by all.  People were, in the main, overawed by and highly respectful of him.  A remote, stern soul, yet to Dr. Gridley he was little more than a child or schoolboy—­one to be bossed on occasion and made to behave.  Plainly, the doctor had the conviction that all of us, great and small, were very much in need of sympathy and care, and that he, the doctor, was the one to provide it.  At any rate, he had known the colonel long and well, and in a public place—­at the principal street corner, for instance, or in the postoffice where we school children were wont to congregate—­it was not at all surprising to hear him take the old colonel, who was quite frail now, to task for not taking better care of himself—­coming out, for instance, without his rubbers, or his overcoat, in wet or chilly weather, and in other ways misbehaving himself.

“There you go again!” I once heard him call to the colonel, as the latter was leaving the postoffice and he was entering (there was no rural free delivery in those days) “—­walking around without your rubbers, and no overcoat!  You want to get me up in the night again, do you?”