Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/385

Rh "'T was a beautiful system of medical practice introduced by old Doc into that isthmus of land. He'd take that bracket saw and the mild chloride and his hypodermic, and treat anything from yellow fever to a personal friend.

"Besides his other liabilities Doc could play a flute for a minute or two. He was guilty of two tunes—'Dixie' and another one that was mighty close to 'Suwanee River'—you might say it was one of its tributaries. He used to come down and sit with me while I was getting well, and aggrieve his flute and say unreconstructed things about the North. You 'd have thought the smoke from the first gun at Fort Sumter was still floating around in the air.

[O Keefe tells how, participating in a Colombian revolution on the insurgent side, he was captured by the government troops and after a trial was sentenced to be shot in two weeks. His appeal to the American consul for protection proving ineffectual, he requests the consul to have Doc Millikin come to see him.]

"Doc comes and looks through the bars at me, surrounded by dirty soldiers, with even my shoes and canteen confiscated, and he looks mightily pleased.

"'Hello, Yank,' says he, 'getting a little taste of Johnson's Island, now, ain't ye?' "'Doc, says I, 'I 've just had an interview with the U. S. consul. I gather from his remarks that I might just as well have been caught selling suspenders in Kishineff under the name of Rosenstein as to be in my present condition. It seems that the only maritime aid I am to receive from the United States is some navy plug to chew. Doc,' says I, 'can't you suspend hostilities on the slavery question long enough to do something for me?' "'It ain't been my habit,' Doc Millikin answers, 'to do any painless dentistry when I find a Yank cutting an eyetooth. So the Stars and Stripes ain't landing any marines to shell the huts