Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/182

 produce a healthy population would be the worst thing in the world for them; and that they must all be replaced by public health officials.

Like all ardent agnostics, Martin was a religious man. Since the death of his Gottlieb-cult he had unconsciously sought a new passion, and he found it now in Gustaf Sondelius's war on disease. Immediately he became as annoying to his patients as he had once been to Digamma Pi.

He informed the farmers at Delft that they had no right to have so much tuberculosis.

This was infuriating, because none of their rights as American citizens was better established, or more often used, than the privilege of being ill. They fumed, "Who does he think he is? We call him in for doctoring, not for bossing. Why, the damn' fool said we ought to burn down our houses—said we were committing a crime if we had the con. here! Won't stand for nobody talking to me like that!"

Everything became clear to Martin—too clear. The nation must make the best physicians autocratic officials, at once, and that was all there was to it. As to how the officials were to become perfect executives, and how people were to be persuaded to obey them, he had no suggestions but only a beautiful faith. At breakfast he scolded, "Another idiotic day of writing prescriptions for bellyaches that ought never to have happened! If I could only get into the Big Fight, along with men like Sondelius! It makes me tired!"

Leora murmured, "Yes, darling. I'll promise to be good. I won't have any little bellyaches or T. B. or anything, so please don't lecture me!".

Even in his irritability he was gentle, for Leora was with child.

Their baby was coming in five months. Martin promised to it everything he had missed.

"He's going to have a real education!" he gloated, as they sat on the porch in spring twilight. "He'll learn all this literature and stuff. We haven't done much ourselves—here we are, stuck in this two-by-twice crossroads for the rest of our lives—but maybe we've gone a little beyond our dads, and he'll go way beyond us."