ing all the straits. Now we can play
picnicking here--play that we are camping out, and that one of these
days, when we've bagged our game, we're going home to Chicago. Now,
we'll set the table;" and he began moving the dishes, pans and bundles
off the pine table on to chairs and the floor.

"Isn't this sweet," said Mrs. Lively, "eating in the kitchen and
without a tablecloth?"

"We'll have a dining-room to-morrow, and a tablecloth," said the
doctor cheerfully.

Thanks to his friend Harrison's letters, Dr. Lively readily obtained
credit for imperative family necessities. If ever anybody merited
success as a cheerful worker, it was our doctor. He did the work of
ever-so-many men, and almost of one woman. Pray don't despise him when
I tell you that he kneaded the bread, to save Mrs. Lively's back; that
he did most of the family washing--that is, he did the rubbing, the
wringing, the lifting, the hanging out--and once a week he scrubbed.
When he wasn't "doing housework" he was in his office, busy, not with
patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers. Then
he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the
dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, although
there seemed to be considerable sickness. He heard of the other doctor
riding all night. Indeed, if one could believe all that was said, this
physician never slept. True, this man was not a graduate of medicine.
He had been a barber, and had gone directly from the razor to the
scalpel; but that did not matter: he had more calls in a week than Dr.
Lively had during the winter.

"The idea of being beaten by a barber!" exclaimed Mrs. Lively. "Why
don't you advertise yourself?"

"There's no paper here to advertise in."

"Then you ought to have a sign to tell people what you are--that you
were surgeon of volunteers in the army; that you had a good practice
in Chicago; that you're a graduate of two medical schools; that you
write for the medical journals and for the magazines. Why don't you
have these things put on a big sign?"

"It would be unprofessional."

"To be professional you must sit in that miserable office and let
your family starve. Why don't you denounce this upstart barber?--tell
people that he hasn't a diploma--that he doesn't know anything--that
he couldn't reduce that hernia and had to call on you?"

"That's opposed to all medical ethics."

"Medical fiddlesticks! You've got to sit here like a maiden, to