During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States, has always been bestowed1 upon distinguished2 members of the medical profession.
This profession in America has constantly been held in honour, and more successfully than elsewhere has put forward a claim to the epithet3 of "liberal."
In a country in which, to play a social part, you must either earn your income or make believe that you earn it, the healing art has appeared in a high degree to combine two recognised sources of credit.
It belongs to the realm of the practical, which in the United States is a great recommendation; and it is touched by the light of science--a merit appreciated in a community in which the love of knowledge has not always been accompanied by leisure and opportunity.
It was an element in Dr. Sloper's reputation that his learning and his skill were very evenly balanced; he was what you might call a scholarly doctor, and yet there was nothing abstract in his remedies--he always ordered you to take something.
Though he was felt to be extremely thorough, he was not uncomfortably theoretic, and if he sometimes explained matters rather more minutely than might seem of use to the patient, he never went so far (like some practitioners4 one has heard of) as to trust to the explanation alone, but always left behind him an inscrutable prescription5.
There were some doctors that left the prescription without offering any explanation at all; and he did not belong to that class either, which was, after all, the most vulgar.
It will be seen that I am describing a clever man; and this is really the reason why Dr. Sloper had become a local celebrity6.
At the time at which we are chiefly concerned with him, he was some fifty years of age, and his popularity was at its height.
He was very witty7, and he passed in the best society of New York for a man of the world--which, indeed, he was, in a very sufficient degree.
I hasten to add, to anticipate possible misconception, that he was not the least of a charlatan8.
He was a thoroughly9 honest man--honest in a degree of which he had perhaps lacked the opportunity to give the complete measure; and, putting aside the great good-nature of the circle in which he practised, which was rather fond of boasting that it possessed10 the "brightest" doctor in the country, he daily justified11 his claim to the talents attributed to him by the popular voice.
He was an observer, even a philosopher, and to be bright was so natural to him, and (as the popular voice said) came so easily, that he never aimed at mere12 effect, and had none of the little tricks and pretensions13 of second-rate reputations.
It must be confessed that fortune had favoured him, and that he had found the path to prosperity very soft to his tread.
He had married at the age of twenty-seven, for love, a very charming girl, Miss Catherine Harrington, of New York, who, in addition to her charms, had brought him a solid dowry.
Mrs. Sloper was amiable14, graceful15, accomplished16, elegant, and in 1820 she had been one of the pretty girls of the small but promising17 capital which clustered about the Battery and overlooked the Bay, and of which the uppermost boundary was indicated by the grassy18 waysides of Canal Street.
Even at the age of twenty- seven Austin Sloper had made his mark sufficiently19 to mitigate20 the anomaly of his having been chosen among a dozen suitors by a young woman of high fashion, who had ten thousand dollars of income and the most charming eyes in the island of Manhattan.
These eyes, and some of their accompaniments, were for about five years a source of extreme satisfaction to the young physician, who was both a devoted21 and a very happy husband.
The fact of his having married a rich woman made no difference in the line he had traced for himself, and he cultivated his profession with as definite a purpose as if he still had no other resources than his fraction of the modest patrimony22 which on his father's death he had shared with his brothers and sisters.
This purpose had not been preponderantly to make money- -it had been rather to learn something and to do something.
To learn something interesting, and to do something useful--this was, roughly speaking, the programme he had sketched23, and of which the accident of his wife having an income appeared to him in no degree to modify the validity.
He was fond of his practice, and of exercising a skill of which he was agreeably conscious, and it was so patent a truth that if he were not a doctor there was nothing else he could be, that a doctor he persisted in being, in the best possible conditions.
Of course his easy domestic situation saved him a good deal of drudgery24, and his wife's affiliation25 to the "best people" brought him a good many of those patients whose symptoms are, if not more interesting in themselves than those of the lower orders, at least more consistently displayed.
He desired experience, and in the course of twenty years he got a great deal.
It must be added that it came to him in some forms which, whatever might have been their intrinsic value, made it the reverse of welcome.
His first child, a little boy of extraordinary promise, as the Doctor, who was not addicted26 to easy enthusiasms, firmly believed, died at three years of age, in spite of everything that the mother's tenderness and the father's science could invent to save him.
Two years later Mrs. Sloper gave birth to a second infant--an infant of a sex which rendered the poor child, to the Doctor's sense, an inadequate27 substitute for his lamented28 first- born, of whom he had promised himself to make an admirable man.
The little girl was a disappointment; but this was not the worst.
A week after her birth the young mother, who, as the phrase is, had been doing well, suddenly betrayed alarming symptoms, and before another week had elapsed Austin Sloper was a widower29.
For a man whose trade was to keep people alive, he had certainly done poorly in his own family; and a bright doctor who within three years loses his wife and his little boy should perhaps be prepared to see either his skill or his affection impugned30.
Our friend, however, escaped criticism:
that is, he escaped all criticism but his own, which was much the most competent and most formidable.
He walked under the weight of this very private censure31 for the rest of his days, and bore for ever the scars of a castigation32 to which the strongest hand he knew had treated him on the night that followed his wife's death.
The world, which, as I have said, appreciated him, pitied him too much to be ironical33; his misfortune made him more interesting, and even helped him to be the fashion.
It was observed that even medical families cannot escape the more insidious34 forms of disease, and that, after all, Dr. Sloper had lost other patients beside the two I have mentioned; which constituted an honourable35 precedent36.
His little girl remained to him, and though she was not what he had desired, he proposed to himself to make the best of her. He had on hand a stock of unexpended authority, by which the child, in its early years, profited largely.
She had been named, as a matter of course, after her poor mother, and even in her most diminutive37 babyhood the Doctor never called her anything but Catherine.
She grew up a very robust38 and healthy child, and her father, as he looked at her, often said to himself that, such as she was, he at least need have no fear of losing her.
I say "such as she was," because, to tell the truth--But this is a truth of which I will defer39 the telling.
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1
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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practitioners
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| n.习艺者，实习者( practitioner的名词复数 )；从业者（尤指医师） | |
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prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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charlatan
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| n.骗子；江湖医生；假内行 | |
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9
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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grassy
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| adj.盖满草的；长满草的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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mitigate
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| vt.（使）减轻，（使）缓和 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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patrimony
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| n.世袭财产，继承物 | |
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sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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affiliation
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| n.联系，联合 | |
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addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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impugned
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| v.非难，指谪( impugn的过去式和过去分词 )；对…有怀疑 | |
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censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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castigation
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| n.申斥，强烈反对 | |
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33
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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34
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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precedent
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| n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的 | |
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37
diminutive
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| adj.小巧可爱的，小的 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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defer
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| vt.推迟，拖延；vi.(to)遵从，听从，服从 | |
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