Arrowsmith (1925) by Sinclair Lewis

Author:Sinclair Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, Medical, Classics, Ethics, Fiction
ISBN: 9780451513717
Publisher: Signet Classics
Published: 1925-03-01T14:00:00+00:00

Last updated on Wed Jan 12 09:40:45 2011 for eBooks@Adelaide.

Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis

CHAPTER 22

This summer Pickerbaugh had shouted and hand-shaken his way through a brief Chautauqua tour in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Martin realized that though he seemed, in contrast to Gustaf Sondelius, an unfortunately articulate and generous lout, he was destined to be ten times better known in America than Sondelius could ever be, a thousand times better known than Max Gottlieb.

He was a correspondent of many of the nickel-plated Great Men whose pictures and sonorous aphorisms appeared in the magazines: the advertising men who wrote little books about Pep and Optimism, the editor of the magazine which told clerks how to become Goethes and Stonewall Jacksons by studying correspondence-courses and never touching the manhood-rotting beer, and the cornfield sage who was equally an authority on finance, peace, biology, editing, Peruvian ethnology, and making oratory pay. These intellectual rulers recognized Pickerbaugh as one of them; they wrote quippish letters to him: and when he answered he signed himself “Pick,” in red pencil.

The Onward March Magazine, which specialized in biographies of Men Who Have Made Good, had an account of Pickerbaugh among its sketches of the pastor who built his own, beautiful Neo–Gothic church out of tin cans, the lady who had in seven years kept 2,698 factory-girls from leading lives of shame, and the Oregon cobbler who had taught himself to read Sanskrit, Finnish, and Esperanto.

“Meet Ol’ Doe Almus Pickerbaugh, a he-man whom Chum Frink has hailed as ‘the two-fisted, fighting poet doc,’ a scientist who puts his remarkable discoveries right over third base, yet who, as a reg’lar old-fashioned Sunday-school superintendent, rebukes the atheistic so-called scientists that are menacing the foundations of our religion and liberties by their smart-aleck cracks at everything that is noble and improving,” chanted the chronicler.

Martin was reading this article, trying to realize that it was actually exposed in a fabulous New York magazine, with a million circulation, when Pickerbaugh summoned him.

“Marty” he said, “do you feel competent to run this Department?”

“Why, uh —”

“Do you think you can buck the Interests and keep a clean city all by yourself?”

“Why, uh —”

“Because it looks as if I were going to Washington, as the next congressman from this district!”

“Really?”

“Looks that way. Boy, I’m going to take to the whole nation the Message I’ve tried to ram home here!”

Martin got out quite a good “I congratulate you.” He was so astonished that it sounded fervent. He still had a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressmen were persons of intelligence and importance.

“I’ve just been in conference with some of the leading Republicans of the district. Great surprise to me. Ha, ha, ha! Maybe they picked me because they haven’t anybody else to run this year. Ha, ha, ha!”

Martin also laughed. Pickerbaugh looked as though that was not exactly the right response, but he recovered and caroled on:

“I said to them, ‘Gentlemen, I must warn you that I am not sure I possess the rare qualifications needful in

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