Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis [11]
The terrible thing happened when the Board of Regents were being shown through the campus. The Regents were the supreme rulers of the University; they were bankers and manufacturers and pastors of large churches; to them even the president was humble. Nothing gave them more interesting thrills than the dissecting-room of the medical school. The preachers spoke morally of the effect of alcohol on paupers, and the bankers of the disrespect for savings-accounts which is always to be seen in the kind of men who insist on becoming cadavers. In the midst of the tour, led by Dr. Stout and the umbrella-carrying secretary of the University, the plumpest and most educational of all the bankers stopped near Clif Clawson’s dissecting-table, with his derby hat reverently held behind him, and into that hat Clif dropped a pancreas.
Now a pancreas is a damp and disgusting thing to find in your new hat, and when the banker did so find one, he threw down the hat and said that the students of Winnemac had gone to the devil. Dr. Stout and the secretary comforted him; they cleaned the derby and assured him that vengeance should be done on the man who could put a pancreas in a banker’s hat.
Dr. Stout summoned Clif, as president of the Freshmen. Clif was pained. He assembled the class, he lamented that any Winnemac Man could place a pancreas in a banker’s hat, and he demanded that the criminal be manly enough to stand up and confess.
Unfortunately the Reverend Ira Hinkley, who sat between Martin and Angus Duer, had seen Clif drop the pancreas. He growled, “This is outrageous! I’m going to expose Clawson, even if he is a frat-brother of mine.”
Martin protested, “Cut it out. You don’t want to get him fired?”
“He ought to be!”
Angus Duer turned in his seat, looked at Ira, and suggested, “Will you kindly shut up?” and, as Ira subsided, Angus became to Martin more admirable and more hateful than ever.
III
When he was depressed by a wonder as to why he was here, listening to a Professor Robertshaw, repeating verses about fat-eared Germans, learning the trade of medicine like Fatty Pfaff or Irving Watters, then Martin had relief in what he considered debauches. Actually they were extremely small debauches; they rarely went beyond too much lager in the adjacent city of Zenith, or the smiles of a factory girl parading the sordid back avenues, but to Martin, with his pride in taut strength, his joy in a clear brain, they afterward seemed tragic.
His safest companion was Clif Clawson. No matter how much bad beer he drank, Clif was never much more intoxicated than in his normal state. Martin sank or rose to Clif’s buoyancy, while Clif rose or sank to Martin’s speculativeness. As they sat in a back-room, at a table glistening with beer-glass rings, Clif shook his finger and babbled, “You’re only one ‘at gets me, Mart. You know with all the hell-raising, and all the talk about bein’ c’mmercial that I pull on these high boys like Ira Stinkley, I’m jus’ sick o’ c’mmercialism an’ bunk as you are.”
“Sure. You bet,” Martin agreed with alcoholic fondness. “You’re jus’ like me. My God, do you get it — dough-face like Irving Watters or heartless climber like Angus Duer, and then old Gottlieb! Ideal of research! Never bein’ content with what SEEMS true! Alone, not carin’ a damn, square-toed as a captain on the bridge, working all night, getting to the bottom of things!”
“Thash stuff. That’s my idee, too. Lez have ‘nother beer. Shake you for it!” observed Clif Clawson.
Zenith, with its saloons, was fifteen miles from Mohalis and the University of Winnemac; half an hour by the huge, roaring, steel interurban trolleys, and to Zenith the medical students went for their forays. To say that one had “gone into town last night” was a matter for winks and leers. But with Angus Duer, Martin discovered a new Zenith.
At supper Duer said abruptly, “Come into town with me and hear a concert.”
For all his fancied superiority to the class, Martin was illimitably ignorant of literature, of