e as
the exponent of the Mammon of Unrighteousness."

"Unfortunately, he is a great god with legislatures, East as well as
West," answered Miss Holland, and then they all went out together.

CHAPTER XII

A TUBERCULAR KNEE AND A WORRIED SURGEON

Dr. Earl found his hands uncommonly full for the next few weeks. What
with the endless detail attendant upon the arrangements for his new
offices, and the perfection of his equipment, it seemed as if there were
not enough hours in the day to meet all the calls upon him. Leonora
looked aggrieved, and Hilda complained loudly that he had deserted them.

The spectacular manner in which the yellower part of the New York press
had handled his first case after his return, brought him telephone calls
and personal visits from many old patients, and a goodly number from new
ones, not to mention freaky interviews with persons representing all
sorts of cults. He was asked to address half a dozen different branches
of the New Thought movement. The Society for the Propagation of Esoteric
Buddhism asked him to tell them of his experiences in Hindoostan;
"Purple Mother" and "Besant" Theosophists sent committees to wait on
him, and various believers in Spiritist exploitations, astrologists,
psychometrists and all sorts and conditions of dabblers in occultism
pestered him with letters, circulars and requests of every conceivable
nature.

It had been no part of his plan to return to his native land and set up
a practice by which he should exploit to the world the results of his
study. A real student, he knew very well that a lifetime would be all
too short to devote to the as yet but little known field of mental
therapeutics, and nothing could have been more foreign to his character,
individually or professionally, than the fanfare of trumpets with which
his return had been heralded. The principles which he wished to prove
must be brought home to his profession if they were to be of great and
lasting benefit, and the publicity and advertising which a man of a
different calibre might have enjoyed, were annoying in the extreme to
Earl. He was still a young man, and modest withal, and he felt that
nothing could be more detrimental with the men whose regard he wished to
secure and hold, so he declined all invitations to speak, all requests
for articles or interviews, and gave himself up to getting back into
the harness. His patients, both old and new, took up more time than he
could have