The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [53]
Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and not the slightest change of tone, said,
“Mother, I’m going to study medicine?”
Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity.
“Thee, study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine! Does thee think thee could stand it six months? And the lectures, and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms?”
“Mother,” said Ruth calmly, “I have thought it all over. I know I can go through the whole, clinics, dissecting room and all. Does thee think I lack nerve? What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person living?”
“But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand the severe application. And, besides, suppose thee does learn medicine?”
“I will practice it.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Where thee and thy family are known?”
“If I can get patients.”
“I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office,” said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in, as she rose and left the room.
Ruth sat quite still for a time, with face intent and flushed. It was out now. She had begun her open battle.
The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city. Was there any building in Greece to compare with Girard College, was there ever such a magnificent pile of stone devised for the shelter of poor orphans? Think of the stone shingles of the roof eight inches thick! Ruth asked the enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the accommodation of any body? If they were orphans, would they like to be brought up in a Grecian temple?
And then there was Broad street! Wasn’t it the broadest and the longest street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end, or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest.
But neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders of the Mint nor the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our fathers sit always signing the Declaration, impressed the visitors so much as the splendors of the Chestnut street windows, and the bargains on Eighth street.2 The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the Yearly Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more worldly circles.
“Is thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?” asked one of the girls.
“I have nothing to wear,” replied that demure person. “If thee wants to see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and conformed to the letter of the true form, thee must go to the Arch Street Meeting.3 Any departure from either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade for her new bonnet. Oh, thee must go by all means. But thee won’t see there a sweeter woman than mother.”
“And thee won’t go?”
“Why should I? I’ve been again and again. If I go to Meeting at all I like best to sit in the quiet old house in Germantown, where the windows are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves. It’s such a crush at the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there’s the row of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare at us as we come out. No, I don’t feel at home there.”
That evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room fire, as they were quite apt to do at night. It was always a time of confidences.
“Thee has another letter from young Sterling,” said Eli Bolton.
“Yes. Philip has gone to the far west.”
“How far?”
“He doesn’t say, but it’s on the frontier, and on the map everything beyond it is marked ‘Indians’ and ‘desert,’ and looks as desolate as a Wednesday Meeting.”
“Humph. It was time for him to do something. Is he going to start a daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?”4
“Father, thee’s unjust to Philip. He’s going into business.”
“What sort of business can a